Citizens confront multiple challenges when attempting to access public services. This article focuses on an aspect yet unaddressed by existing literature on administrative burdens: the complexity of the written language used by government agencies in Latin America. It presents an impact...

This paper reviews the published literature on the definition and measurement of the administrative and compliance costs of taxation, with special reference to VAT (including evasion and fraud) in the European Union. -- Taxation ; Subsidies ; Revenue

As documented by empirical research, tax compliance costs are a considerable burden for private businesses. However, cost estimates may be biased due to survey non-response and questionnaire framing effects. This paper investigates the impact of both aspects on cost estimates. We do not find...

How much companies pay in corporate income taxes is often better captured by effective tax rates (ETRs) rather than by statutory ones. Economists further distinguish between those modelled using the law - forward-looking ETRs - and those estimated from actual data on companies' profits and taxes...

How to fight petty day-to-day corruption is a question often debated by politicians, by the public and in the economic literature. Early studies have noted that a simple and well-known way to fight day-to-day corruption is to create competition among corrupt officials. This paper shows that even...

As economic integration within the European Union (EU) progresses, the interactions between the tax systems of the Member States are of growing importance. Member State tax policies can have spillover effects on other Member States and differing abilities to provide net fiscal benefits to...

The European Commission is evaluating the performance of the common VAT, which has many shortcomings. The numerous exemptions and differentiated rate structures violate the logic and functionality of the VAT. The exemptions distort input choices and outsourcing policies. Reduced rates are...