Individuals vary considerably in how much they earn during their lifetimes. We study how the tax-and-transfer system o … life-cycle model, we find that redistribution by taxes and transfers off sets 54% of the inequality in lifetime earnings …

Individuals vary considerably in how much they earn during their lifetimes. This study examines the role of the tax … lifetime tax reform linking annual taxes to previous employment could improve the system's insurance capabilities, albeit at …

Russia dramatically reduced its higher rates of personal income tax (PIT) in 2001 establishing a single marginal rate …. This 'flat tax' experience has attracted much attention (and emulation) among policymakers, making it perhaps the most … important tax reform of recent years. But it has been little studied. This paper asks whether the strong revenue performance of …

With the public finances of many developing and emerging market countries still heavily dependent on trade tax revenues … each dollar of lost trade tax revenue, with signs of close to full recovery when separately identifying episodes in which … trade tax revenues fell. Troublingly, however, revenue recovery has been extremely weak in low-income countries (which are …

One of the most striking tax developments in recent years, and one that continues to attract considerable attention, is … the adoption by several countries of a form of "flat tax." Discussion of these quite radical reforms has been marked …, however, more by assertion and rhetoric than by analysis and evidence. This paper reviews experience with the flat tax …

globalization poses for revenue mobilization in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): from corporate tax competition, and from trade … resourcerelated and other revenues, and a disentangling of tariff from commodity tax revenue. Countries' experiences vary quite widely …, nonresource revenues have been essentially stagnant. Corporate tax revenues have held up, despite a reduction in rates and …

This paper explores the implications of a distinctive feature of the value added tax (VAT) that is stressed by … practitioners but essentially ignored by theorists: that it functions, in part, as a tax on the purchases of informal operators from …, precisely because it is in part a tax on informal sector production. But they are restrictive: more generally, an efficient tax …

The effects on trade performance of corporate taxes and the value-added tax (VAT) continue to excite controversy but … the corporate tax, the pattern of which is as theory would predict from a source-based tax of this kind. Increases in …

first shows that a tax innovation-such as the introduction of a VAT- reduces the marginal cost of public funds if and only … if it also leads an optimizing government to increase the tax ratio. This leads to the estimation, on a large panel, of a … impact is generally ambiguous, but most countries that have adopted a VAT seem to have gained a more effective tax instrument …

This paper addresses two fundamental issues in indirect tax design. It first revisits the case for reduced rates on … rate on a broad base†is always good tax policy—may plausibly be large even at a low nominal tax rate and with few …