The use of neural networks has been slow in coming to the public sector. One promising area in which neural networks are likely to prove beneficial is in the area of revenue forecasting. A sales tax forecasting model is developed and compared to the actual collections for the State of Indiana....

The use of neural networks has been slow in coming to the public sector. One promising area in which neural networks are likely to prove beneficial is in the area of revenue forecasting. A sales tax forecasting model is developed and compared to the actual collections for the State of Indiana....

Conventional wisdom has it that the value-added tax is not a suitable instrument for lower-level jurisdictions (‘provinces’) in a federal system. The problems that arise when it is so used have become a serious constraint on the development of the VAT—and closer economic integration—in...

This paper presents a new dataset of fiscal consolidation for 17 OECD economies during 1978-2009. We focus on discretionary changes in taxes and government spending primarily motivated by a desire to reduce the budget deficit and not by a response to prospective economic conditions. To identify...

This paper provides an overview of the key economic factors that shape tax policy reform in many high-income countries, developing countries, and/or transition economies. The paper describes and evaluates global and regional developments with respect to tax rates and revenue ratios over the last...

Tax reform in Latin America during the 1980s emphasized broad-based, low-rate consumption taxes over steeply progressive income and property taxes, primarily to simplify the tax structure and facilitate tax administration. While tax reform need not necessarily raise tax-to-GDP ratios, countries...