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Abstract
One of the central challenges facing low-income and developing countries is to mobilize sufficient tax revenue to sustainably finance, when combined with whatever aid is available, the expenditures needed for growth and poverty relief—and to do so in a way that does not itself undercut those objectives by unduly worsening preexisting distortions or inequities. This chapter seeks to describe and assess the way in which developing countries were addressing these problems at the turn of the century. More particularly, it focuses on the experience of the 1990s—roughly the period since the major survey of taxation in developing countries by Burgess and Stern (1993). While experiences have naturally varied quite significantly across countries over this decade, and although 10 years is a relatively short period in the life of a tax system—indeed, that may be one of the central lessons to be drawn from the analysis in this chapter—some common themes nevertheless emerge. And some of them are troubling.
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