The Report on the Bihar Panchayat Raj Institution Finance Study examines the autonomy, capacity, and accountability of local self-governments in the State of Bihar. This report is based on data collected from a set of 3 surveys conducted on a stratified random sample of 5 Zila Parishads, 10...

The goal of this paper is to revisit the issue of the appropriate assignment of the property tax within the context of a fiscally decentralized system. We examine whether the conventional wisdom of assigning property taxes to local governments is the right one. Particularly in light of the...

This report provides estimates of Pakistan’s tax gap by type of tax and describes the methodologies and data used to produce these estimates. A country’s tax gap is the amount of tax that goes uncollected due to non-compliance with the tax law. For estimation purposes, the operational...

An important goal of a state's economic policy is to create an attractive place to do business and well paying jobs for the future so that Rhode Island 's talented and well educated youth choose to pursue careers at home rather than in neighboring states. As discussed in greater detail, high...

This paper examines the pattern of income mobility during the 1980s and the mid 1990s. It employs a panel of individual income tax returns for the years 1979 through 1995 to study this pattern, and explore whether income mobility has increased during the period. We focus on working age...

In 2001 the Russian government introduced a bold reform of its tax system, which included the adoption of a flat-rate income tax. Until then, only a few countries, including the transition countries of Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania , had adopted a flat-rate income tax. This reform has...

There is considerable evidence that enforcement efforts can increase tax compliance. However, there must be other forces at work because observed compliance levels cannot be fully explained by the level of enforcement actions typical of most tax authorities. Further, there are observed...

Although there are obvious differences in the political systems of China and India, there are surprising similarities in their respective approaches to decentralization. Both countries face similar design issues with their intergovernmental systems, such as the lack of clear expenditure...