Im Vorfeld der Bundestagswahl 2013 findet in Deutschland eine intensive Debatte über die Umverteilungswirkung der Einkommensteuer statt. Insbesondere mit der Senkung des Spitzensteuersatzes auf zwischenzeitlich 42 und nun 45 Prozent wird eine überproportionale Bevorzugung hoher Einkommen...

This paper provides an updated overview of tax incentives for business investment. It begins by noting that tax competition is likely to be a major force driving countries' tax reforms, and discusses tax incentives as a possible response to this. This is complemented by other arguments for and...

The paper discusses some channels through which corruption affects growth such as the impact of corruption on enterprises, on the allocation of talent, and on investment. It also discusses the impact of corruption on some aspects of public finance.

This paper presents a model to determine the tax effort and tax capacity of 113 countries and the main variables on which they depend. The results and the model allow a clear determination of which countries are near their tax capacity and which are some way from it, and therefore, could...

In recent years the level of taxation of many developing countries has changed dramatically over relatively short periods. These changes are too large and too sudden to attribute fully to a deterioration in tax administration or to changes in the traditional determinants of tax levels. The paper...

With the public finances of many developing and emerging market countries still heavily dependent on trade tax revenues, further trade liberalization may be hindered unless they are able to develop alternative sources of revenue. While there is now a well-established body of theory and policy...

This paper studies an optimal tax problem for a small open economy where collecting taxes is costly. It is shown that, in the presence of collection costs modeled as an increasing function of the tax rate: (a) the standard rules of optimal commodity taxation (the Ramsey, the inverse elasticity,...

This paper discusses important tax policy issues facing developing countries today. It views tax policy from both the macroeconomic perspective, which focuses on broad questions such as the level and composition of tax revenue, and the microeconomic perspective, which focuses on certain design...