In Jamaica, as in most countries, consumption taxes in the form of a value-added tax called the General Consumption Tax (GCT) and several excise taxes collectively known as the Special Consumption Tax (SCT) are critically important revenue sources, accounting for 37.4 percent of total revenues...

This paper discusses the roles that real property taxes may potentially play in developing countries both as a source of local revenue and as part of land use policy. We then describe how very far reality diverges from this prescription and note some reasons why it may prove more difficult to...

The value-added tax has, in recent decades, become the most important single tax in most developing and transitional economies. This paper reviews some problems that have emerged as important as more experience has been gained with how VATs really work in many such countries and suggests some...

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...

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...

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 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...

The issue of harmonizing tax incentives in the various regional economic groupings that exist in the Latin America and Caribbean region has recently again come under discussion. My aim in this paper is essentially to sketch a framework within which countries contemplating this issue may approach...

The main theme of this paper is that a more legitimate and responsive state appears to be an essential precondition for a more adequate level of tax effort in developing countries. The most important contribution of this paper is to extend the conventional model of tax effort by showing that not...

We argue in this paper that unless China begins to tackle more systematically the serious problems that have emerged in the finances of its various levels of sub-national government the problems to which the present unsatisfactory system give rise will over time increasingly distort resource...