In this paper, we analyze the case of developing a country that has been involved in a long-term comprehensive tax reform. One might argue that Jamaica is a good case study of the fiscal realities of moving from a conventional tax system to a flat tax system. However, through the reforms of the...

This paper analyzes local government discretion and accountability in Ethiopia in the political, administrative, and fiscal domains. It is based on literature review and interviews of local governments and community members in four regions (Amhara, Oromiya, Tigray and Afar), nine woredas and...

Since 1978, economists, psychologists, sociologists and accountants have used experiments to investigate the determinants of tax compliance. In this paper the author attempts to synthesize this literature in a meta-analysis to draw conclusions regarding the determinants of tax compliance....

The goals of tax policy are to raise revenue in an equitable, efficient, and simple manner. These goals often conflict. A tax system that is equitable may be complicated, while a system that is simple may be unfair or inefficient. Each of these goals may be sacrificed when the tax system is used...

The paper summarizes the arguments in favour of a shift from comprehensive to dual income taxation and complements the discussion by an overview on tax reforms which reveal the characteristic features of a dual income tax system. The scope of our analysis is not restricted to the Nordic...

The aim of regulatory enforcement is to gain future compliance from offenders. At the same time, enforcement practices should not result in the alienation of those they come into contact with. In an area such as taxation, like in many other regulatory contexts, the behaviour being regulated is...

This paper examines the challenges Madagascar has faced in decentralizing government activity since its independence in 1960. This is of interest as we will show that it has been plagued by a series of misstarts down that path. The paper is divided in three parts. The first one summarizes the...

We develop an econometric methodology to control for errors in assessments that result from multi-stage audit processes. We then apply our methodology to data from a random sample of individual income tax audits collected under the Internal Revenue Service’s National Research Program to assess...

Individuals in most all countries face a wide range of direct taxes on their income, especially variants of the individual income tax (IIT) and payroll taxes. For the IIT, attempts are often made to reduce the compliance and administrative costs of the tax (among other reasons) by using...