The international aviation and maritime sectors today enjoy relatively favorable tax treatment, as their fuels are not taxed and the sectors are not subject to any value-added tax or turnover tax. Nor are these fuel uses subject to any global measures to reduce their associated CO2 emissions,...

Negotiations toward a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change have come to a critical point, and domestic climate policies are being developed, as the world seeks to recover from the deepest economic crisis for decades and looks for new sources of sustainable growth. This position...

This paper reviews issues and evidence concerning tax-motivated, cross-border commodity transactions. A distinction is drawn between ""arbitrage trades"" (driven by cross-country differences in tax rates) and ""tax not paid"" transactions (motivated by the opportunity to pay no tax at all on...

This paper, based on the considerable practical experience of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, sets out a successful strategy for modernizing customs administration. The essence is to establish transparent and simple rules and procedures, and to foster voluntary compliance by building a...

Issues of taxation and development, which have long been a central concern of the IMF, have attracted wider and renewed interest in the last few years. This paper reflects on three broad lessons of experience: that developing countries differ vastly in tax matters, and in ways that are less than...

This paper articulates and, using newly-assembled data, explores how international taxation affects aggregate tangible cross-border investment. Spillovers from statutory tax rates abroad seem: As sizable as effects from the host's rate; larger than previous consensus values (attributed to a...

Digitization promises to reshape fiscal policy by transforming how governments collect, process, share, and act on information. More and higher-quality information can improve not only policy design for tax and spending, but also systems for their management, including tax administration and...