We argue in this paper that better rural local governments are needed to improve the lives of billions and that a good property tax is the key to improving rural local governments. Moreover, we suggest that only by giving local governments both the incentive and the ability to levy a property...

Recently many commentators have expressed concern about the fiscal health of Toronto and, more generally, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Such concern is puzzling because most of the available evidence suggests that municipalities in the GTA are fiscally healthy. Over the past decade, for...

This paper show that there is a mismatch between the expenditure responsibilities that the City of Toronto is required to undertake and the revenue tools available to it. Toronto relies mainly on property taxes, user fees, and intergovernmental transfers to finance a wide range of services. In...

This paper reviews the development of property tax policy in the province of Ontario, Canada, over the last two centuries. This review underlines the highly political nature of property tax policy at the local level in the province. Two important realities make the issue highly salient at the...

We consider the place of cities, particularly large cities, in Canadian federalism from several perspectives. Although by most measures the current fiscal condition of Canadian cities seems fairly good, we argue that beneath this happy picture lies a less happy reality. Owing to the limited and...

In developed countries, the income tax, especially the personal income tax, has long been viewed as the primary instrument for redistributing income and wealth. This article examines whether it makes sense for developing countries to rely on the income tax for redistributive purposes. We put...

An important characteristic of many countries is that they exhibit, to greater or lesser degrees, some 'asymmetry' in the way in which different regions are treated by their intergovernmental fiscal systems. This paper explores some of the varied extents and manners in which such asymmetrical...

The main aim of this paper is to present a condensed version of some of the complex facts surrounding several major tax reforms in developing countries so that those concerned with such matters elsewhere can learn and profit from both the successes -- transitory though they may sometimes be --...

I argue in this paper that state value-added tax is more likely to be the right way to tax sales at the state level than seems to be recognized in most current US discussion. As Canadian experience demonstrates, a state VAT is both better in principle than even the best state retail sales tax...

The best tax policy in the world is worth little if it cannot be implemented effectively. Tax policy design in developing countries must therefore take the administrative dimension of taxation carefully into account. What can be done may to a considerable extent determine what is done in any...