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 is a brief review of some issues in urban finance facing China’s larger cities. It argues that at present many key aspects of the ways in which local and metropolitan governments finance infrastructure and services in China seem to be both too obscure for proper accountability and...

For the past fifteen years, Colombia has been engaged in a grand experiment in decentralization. Since 1986, subnational government spending has increased dramatically, as the regions have assumed greater control of health and education programs and other local services, and an increasing...

Overview of The Report on the Panel on the Role of Government(2004). This Report includes recommendations for a number of new spending initiatives, as well as regulatory and tax reforms. The purpose of this review is to appraise the fiscal feasibility of implementing the Panel's recommendations...

As well known, companies shift income from high to low tax jurisdictions. Typically, profit shifting is achieved by “direct” financing structures whereby companies use debt finance in the high tax entity and equity finance in the low tax entity. However, certain tax policies can lead to...

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 --...

This paper is concerned with the extent to which “presumptive taxation” can be an effective tool to cope with what are commonly called the “hard-to-tax”. While the HTT category is seldom very clearly defined -- often, for example, it excludes those at the top of the power pyramid who...

In most countries, substantial business activity is related to financial intermediation: banking, trusts, investment companies and insurance. Financial businesses play a crucial role in the economy by matching lenders with borrowers as well as facilitating governance of businesses through close...

This paper sketches the general course of Colombian decentralization over the last two decades. One section of the paper focuses on the intermediate level of subnational government, the departments. We argue that the present situation is inherently untenable. Either departments must be cut back...

This paper begins by comparing the 1967 Smith committee’s three volume report on Ontario taxation with the 1993 report by the Ontario Fair Tax Commission. These two very different investigations of Ontario’s tax structure, produced in two very different economic and political climates,...