The Commissioner of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) had recommended certain measures in December 2011 to improve the revenues of the corporation and thereby narrow the existing budget gap. These included introduction of congestion and conservancy charges and revision of rates for parking...

With the fall of the Berlin wall, and the subsequent collapse of communism, an era of reforms was initiated in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia which has spread around the globe. A central element in this reform process has been an interest in decentralizing governmental decision...

This paper focuses on excise effects of the property tax system. The excise effects are, of course, only one element in determining the role that property taxes should play as a revenue source and tell us only part of the story on the tax’s ability to generate revenues, the incidence of the...

The property tax is almost everyone’s choice for the principal local government tax revenue source in developing countries. The focus of public policy on this tax, and the interest it has drawn from public finance scholars and practitioners are evidence of its importance. Moreover, both...

In this paper, we report the current state of provincial revenue raising and analyze the potential for increased revenue mobilization. In the sections below, we document the current situation regarding local revenue capacity and mobilization in Pakistan using case studies of Punjab and...

South Africa is at a crossroads in its decentralization policy. On the one hand, it has declared its intention to strengthen the fiscal powers of local governments. On the other hand, the institutional arrangement necessary to guarantee fiscal decentralization, the power to raise local revenues,...