Around the world, there are concerns that many tax codes are biased against women, and that contemporary tax reforms tend to increase the incidence of taxation on the poorest women while failing to generate enough revenue to fund the programs needed to improve these women's lives. Because taxes are the key source of revenue governments themselves raise, understanding the nature and composition of taxation and current tax reform efforts is key to reducing poverty, providing sufficient revenue for public expenditure, and achieving social justice. This is the first book to systematically examine gender and taxation within and across countries at different levels of development. It presents original research on the gender dimensions of personal income taxes, and value-added, excise, and fuel taxes in Argentina, Ghana, India, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, Uganda and the United Kingdom. This book will be of interest to postgraduates and researchers studying Public Finance, International Economics, Development Studies, Gender Studies, and International Relations, among other disciplines.

There is a widespread concern that, in some parts of the world, governments are unable to exercise effective authority. When governments fail, more sinister forces thrive: warlords, arms smugglers, narcotics enterprises, kidnap gangs, terrorist networks, armed militias. Why do governments fail? This book explores an old idea that has returned to prominence: that authority, effectiveness, accountability and responsiveness is closely related to the ways in which governments are financed. It matters that governments tax their citizens rather than live from oil revenues and foreign aid, and it matters how they tax them. Taxation stimulates demands for representation, and an effective revenue authority is the central pillar of state capacity. Using case studies from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, this book presents and evaluates these arguments, updates theories derived from European history in the light of conditions in contemporary poorer countries, and draws conclusions for policy-makers.

Analysis and comparison of taxation in different countries, looking at what tax systems have in common, how they differ and trying to explain both the similarities and the diffences. The first part concerns tax structures. The second part looks at individual taxes or related groups of taxes. The third section deals with some aspects of policy-making and tax administation.

This volume examines the tax systems of some twenty countries to determine whether their tax laws are used to support growth and development across borders in lower-income and poor countries. Given the critical economic development needs of poorer countries and the importance of stability in these regions to the security of populations throughout the world, the use of a country’s tax laws to support investment in the developing world gains crucial significance. This book explores whether international standards promoting the fundamental values of the major tax systems of the world accommodate incentives for these nations. In addition, it analyzes the way in which adoption of principles by higher income nations to protect their own revenue bases has a spill-over effect, impairing the ability of developing countries to sustain their economies. Following an introduction that synthesizes worldwide trends, the volume contains separate chapters for a variety of countries detailing the underlying goals and values of each system and the way in which the decision to employ (or not employ) incentives accommodates those ends. The chapters include reports for: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Maldives, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, and Venezuela. The volume memorializes the work of the General Reporter and National Reporters at the Taxation and Development session of the 19th Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law held in July, 2014, in Vienna, Austria.

Students of public finance and fiscal decentralization in developing and transitional countries have long argued for more intensive use of the property tax. It would seem the ideal choice for financing local government services. Based on a Lincoln Institute conference held in October 2006, the chapters in this book take this argument one step further in drawing on recent experience with property tax policy and administration. Two main sets of issues are addressed. First, why hasn't the property tax worked well in most developing and transitional countries? Second, what can be done to make the property tax a more relevant source for local governments in those countries? The numerous advantages of the property tax as a local government revenue source are analyzed and discussed in detail as are the many perceived disadvantages.

The purpose of this book is to compare different solutions adopted by nine industrialized countries to common problems of income tax design. As in other legal domains, comparative study of income taxation can provide fresh perspectives from which to examine a particular national system. Increasing economic globalization also makes understanding foreign tax systems relevant to a growing set of transnational business transactions. Comparative study is, however, notoriously difficult. Full understanding of a foreign tax system may require mastery not only of a foreign language, but also of foreign business and legal cultures. It would be the work of a lifetime for a single individual to achieve that level of understanding of the nine income taxes compared in this volume. Suppose, however, that an international group of tax law professors, each expert in his own national system, were asked to describe how that system resolved specific problems of income tax design with respect to individuals, business organizations, and international transactions. Suppose further that the leaders of the group wove the resulting answers into a single continuous exposition, which was then reviewed and critiqued by a wider group of tax teachers. The resulting text would provide a convenient and comprehensive introduction to foreign approaches to income taxation for teachers, students, policy-makers and practitioners. That is the path followed by Hugh Ault and Brian Arnold and their collaborators in the development of this fascinating book. Henceforth, a reader interested in how other developed countries resolve such structural issues as the taxation of fringe benefits, the effect of unrealized appreciation at death, the classification of business entities, expatriation to avoid taxes, and so on, can turn to this volume for an initial answer. This book should greatly facilitate comparative analysis in teaching and writing about taxation in the US and elsewhere.

This report is the ninth edition of the OECD's Tax Administration Series. It provides internationally comparative data on aspects of tax systems and their administration in 59 advanced and emerging economies.

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This book captures the critical role of taxation in shaping government responsiveness and accountability in developing countries.

"The studies collected in Ancient Taxation explore the extractive systems of eleven ancient states and societies from across the ancient world, ranging from Bronze Age China to Anglo-Saxon Britain. Together, the contributors explore the challenges of taxation in predominantly agro-pastoral societies, including basic tax strategy (taxing goods vs. labor, in kind vs. money taxes, direct vs. indirect, internal vs. external, etc.), assessment and collection (particularly over wide geographic areas or at large scale, e.g., by tax farming), compliance, and negotiating the cooperation of social, economic, and political elites or other critical social groups. By assembling such a broad range of studies, the book sheds new light on the commonalities and differences between ancient taxation systems, highlighting how studying taxes can shed light on the fiscal and institutional practices of antiquity. It also provides new impetus for comparative research, both between ancient societies and between ancient and modern extractive practices. This book will be of interest to those studying ancient history, economic history, the history of taxation, or comparative politics and economics"--