This paper explores in some aspects of the complex balancing act needed to achieve economically and politically sustainable tax systems in Latin America. By a “sustainable” tax system I mean one that is sufficiently congruent with prevailing economic and political factors in a country to...

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...

Governments exist, in part, to cope with the weaknesses of their citizens and subsist, to some extent, on the basis of those same weaknesses. Alcoholic beverages have long played a critical role on both sides of this equation. Over-indulgence in drink is a factor in crime, injury, and illness....

An empirical model is developed to estimate the probability of a given tax status based on firm characteristics. A structural switching regression model of the firm’s demand for capital goods is next specified and incorporates expressions for the user cost of capital which account for tax...

This paper analyzes the interaction between corporate taxes and corporate governance. We show that the characteristics of a taxation system affect the extraction of private benefits by company insiders. A higher tax rate increases the amount of income insiders divert and thus worsens governance...

Regional diversity may influence the nature and effectiveness of public sector activities through many economic and political channels. The most important and prominent manifestation of diversity in Canada has been the rise to dominance in the largely francophone province of Quebec of a...

This paper considers some of the key instrumental components of intergovernmental fiscal relations that arise in the Russian Federation -- expenditures, revenues, transfers, borrowing, and institutional arrangements -- in comparison both to Canada’s lengthy experience with federalism and to a...

We study corporate income taxation when firms operating in multiple jurisdictions can shift income using tax planning strategies. Because income of corporate groups is not consolidated for tax purposes in Canada, firms may use financial techniques, such as lending among affiliates, to reduce...

This paper consider some aspects of how the value-added tax (VAT) has functioned to date in Ukraine, focusing on linkages between tax design, tax administration, and the structure of the economy. Two problems that have dominated much discussion of the Ukrainian VAT in recent years ? arrears and...