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Business and Economics > Public Finance

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 46 items for :

  • Type: Journal Issue x
  • Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements x
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Cover High-Level Summary Technical Assistance Reports
Sri Lanka: Debt Management Reform Plan
Eriko Togo
At the request of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) of Sri Lanka, a joint IMF-World Bank technical assistance (TA) mission team visited Colombo, Sri Lanka during February 20–March 3, 2023 to support the government in designing a Debt Management Reform Plan, with a focus on the reform of the debt management legal and institutional frameworks, public debt transparency, and the management of guarantees and on-lending.
Keywords:
Debt Management; Institutional Arrangement; Legal Framework; IMF-World Bank Technical assistance; debt management reform plan; IMF's Monetary; CD recipient; request of the Ministry of Finance; Government debt management
Cover Policy Papers
2024 Review Of The Fund’s Transparency Policy And Open Archives Policy—Background Paper 3 On Key Concepts And Supportive Analysis
International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, & Review Department
On November 15, 2024, the IMF’s Executive Board concluded the Review of the IMF’s Transparency Policy and Open Archives Policy and approved a number of reforms. As an international institution, making important documents available to the public on timely basis enhances the IMF’s credibility, accountability, and effectiveness and is critical to fulfill its mandate of promoting global economic and financial stability. While transparency at the IMF is achieved through a range of policies and practices, the Transparency Policy and the Open Archives Policy form the core elements of the IMF’s transparency framework. The Fund has come a long way since the inception of these policies in the early nineties. Most Board documents are now published, published more quickly, and under more consistent and evenhanded application of modification rules. The information available in the Fund’s archives has increased and is more easily accessible to the public. While experience suggests that these policies are effective in delivering on their objectives, the landscape in which the Fund operates has evolved since these policies were last reviewed in 2013. In a more interconnected and shock-prone world the pace with which policymakers need to make decisions has accelerated and the expectations of stakeholders on the availability and timeliness of the Fund’s analysis and policy advice has grown. Against this backdrop, the 2024 Review of the IMF’s Transparency Policy and Open Archives Policy focuses on targeted reforms to (i) support faster publication of board documents and communications of Board’s decisions; (ii) strengthen the rules and processes to modify Board documents prior to publication; and (iii) allow faster release of some documents in the Fund’s archives accessible to the public. The reforms further clarify the scope and objectives of these policies, their implementation processes, and how to strengthen knowledge sharing. The review was supported by data analysis as well as surveys and consultations with key stakeholders, including Executive Directors, country authorities, IMF missions chiefs, and civil society organizations as detailed in the three background papers accompanying this 2024 review.
Keywords:
Accountability; Archives; Communication; Independence; Lending; Modification Rules; Publication; Surveillance Transparency; IMF's Transparency policy; publication regime; fund staff; Board document; i. staff guidance; Debt sustainability; Debt sustainability analysis; Civil society organizations; Poverty reduction strategy
Cover Selected Issues Papers
Recent Trends of Informality in Greece: Evidence from Subnational Data
Larry Q Cui
and
Jiaxiong Yao
This paper explores the evolution of informality in Greece as it is widely considered one of the major structural impediments to fiscal capacity and sustainable growth. It finds that informality has dropped significantly in Greece in recent years, although there were temporary increases during the sovereign debt crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Lower informality is also found to be associated with higher subsequent per capita GDP growth and higher tax revenue. Moreover, Greece’s significant recent progress in digitalization appears to have helped reduce informality. There remains scope to further reduce informality by accelerating digitalization and the ongoing pro-growth structural reforms.
Keywords:
Greece; informality; MIMIC model; subnational; Subnational data; trends of Informality; tax revenue loss; evolution of Informality; informality trend; Informal economy; Digitalization; Public employment; Tax evasion
Cover IMF Working Papers
Designing a Presumptive Income Tax Based on Turnover in Countries with Large Informal Sectors
Feng Wei
and
Jean-François Wen
Turnover (sales) is frequently used in developing countries as a presumptive income tax base, to economize on the costs of tax administration and taxpayer compliance. We construct a simple model where a size threshold separates firms paying turnover tax from those paying profit tax (regular income tax), and where firms have the option of producing in the untaxed, informal sector. The optimal turnover tax rate trades off two policy concerns: reducing informality and avoiding strategic reductions in sales by firms seeking to remain below the threshold for the profit tax. We provide analytical results and calibrate the model to compute the optimal policy using realistic parameter values. The optimal turnover tax rate for countries with large informal sectors is found to be around 2.5% across most scenarios, while the threshold separating the turnover tax regime from profit tax lies for the most part between $65,000 and $95,000. Introducing an optimally designed turnover tax reduces the rate of informality of businesses by about 12 percentage points in the calibrated model.
Keywords:
Turnover Tax; Corporate Income Tax; Compliance Costs; Informality; turnover tax rate; profit tax; policy concern; IMF working paper 23/267; presumptive income tax; Sales tax; Presumptive tax; Tax return filing compliance; Sub-Saharan Africa
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Dominica: Technical Assistance Report-External Sector Statistics
International Monetary Fund. Statistics Dept.
This Technical Assistance report on Dominica focuses on external sector statistics. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) and the Central Statistics Office have implemented recommendations from the previous mission regarding timeliness and data accessibility. The mission focused on improving data sources for travel credits and the Citizenship by Investment Program (CBI) flows for the balance of payments. Revised 2022 balance of payments estimates were reviewed; additional refinement is needed. The ECCB has been incorporating available cash-based data on CBI flows from the fiscal sector into the balance of payments. However, fiscal data for 2021 and 2022 show some possible misclassifications that would affect the correct recording of external flows in the balance of payments. The report highlights that follow-up on the request made to the CBI to complete the ECCB balance of payments questionnaires for 2021 and 2022 and report on the existence of foreign escrow accounts. Coordination between data-producing agencies needs to be improved. A survey of cruise passengers is required to improve the estimates of visitor expenditure; visitors that arrive by yatchs are not surveyed either.
Keywords:
Dominica; balance of payments statistics.; balance of payments statement; balance of payments estimate; business visitor; VES result; visitor expenditure questionnaire; ECCB website; Civil society organizations; External sector statistics; International investment position; Credit; Caribbean
Cover IMF How To Notes
How to Implement Electronic Fiscal Reporting (Fiscalization)
José Maria Pires
,
Stephen Howlin
, and
Mr. Frank van Brunschot
To improve the management of tax compliance risks, tax administrations are increasingly seeking opportunities to enhance their access and use of data. For many years, there has been a worldwide trend to implement electronic fiscal reporting (also known as fiscalization) to achieve these aims. Fiscalization refers to the process of automated reporting of a taxpayer’s business activities to the tax administration. When implemented as an integral part of compliance risk management processes, fiscalization will contribute to an improvement in tax compliance by making it easier for taxpayers to voluntarily comply, and discouraging taxpayers who may choose to not report their business transactions. However, fiscalization alone will not address all tax compliance risks. This how-to note provides practical guidance about the case for fiscalization and implementation approaches, including good practices and practices to avoid in relation to the key dimensions of fiscalization: data collection, data analysis, integration with compliance risk management, consumer engagement, and implementation.
Keywords:
tax compliance; fiscalization; electronic fiscal devices; discouraging taxpayer; IMF Library; business activities; implementation approach; CRM processes; Tax administration core functions; Data collection; Fiscal reporting; Tax return filing compliance; Compliance risk management; Global
Cover Policy Papers
Staff Guidance Note on Information Sharing in The Context of Sovereign Debt Restructurings
International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept.
and
International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, & Review Department
The guidance note sets out principles governing information sharing in the context of sovereign debt restructurings. It restates the existing Fund governance and policy guidelines for information sharing to help inform and harmonize practices across Fund country teams. In addition to outlining guiding principles applicable to information sharing, it provides guidance on what level of information can be shared during each stage of the restructuring and program design process and in the surveillance context
Keywords:
confidentiality; debt relief; debt sustainability analysis; executive board documents; external debt; fund policies; policy framework papers; political economy; publications; public debt; transparency; draft debt sustainability analysis; transparency policy; Fund staff; Fund arrangement; draft DSA document; restructuring process; Fund-supported program; analysis act; Debt sustainability; Debt restructuring; Sovereign debt restructuring
Cover Policy Papers
Review of Implementation of The 2018 Framework for Enhanced Fund Engagement on Governance
International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept.
,
International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept.
, and
International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, & Review Department
This paper reviews the implementation of the “2018 Framework for Enhanced Fund Engagement on Governance” (the “2018 Governance Framework”). The Board adopted the 2018 Governance Framework to promote a more systematic, effective, candid, and evenhanded engagement with member countries regarding corruption of macro critical dimensions and governance vulnerabilities that allow corruption. Building upon various sources of information, including surveys with key stakeholders, the paper provides a comprehensive stocktaking of the Fund’s work in governance and corruption since 2018, and makes specific proposals to further improve implementation of the Framework.
Keywords:
governance; corruption; systematic; effective; candid; evenhanded; enhanced engagement; IMF Text Analytics database; IMF engagement; governance vulnerability; audit report; IMF's work; Auditing; Civil society organizations; Emergency assistance; Anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT); Global
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
St. Lucia: Technical Assistance Report-External Sector Statistics
International Monetary Fund. Statistics Dept.
A remote technical assistance (TA) mission on external sector statistics (ESS) was conducted for the Central Statistical Office (CSO) of Saint Lucia during March 22–26, 2021. The mission was part of the Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC) work program on External Sector Statistics (ESS).
Keywords:
IMF's Statistics Department; World Bank staff; balance of payments manual; balance of payments survey data; instrumentalities of the TA recipient; Civil society organizations; External sector statistics; Exports; Balance of payments statistics; Caribbean
Cover IMF Working Papers
Fiscal Resilience Building: Insights from a New Tax Revenue Diversification Index
Rasmané Ouedraogo
,
Rene Tapsoba
,
Moussé Sow
, and
Ali Compaoré
Does the reliance on diversified tax structure enhance resilience to fiscal risks? This paper gives an answer to this question by proposing a new cross-country tax revenue diversification index (RDI). The RDI builds on the Theil index, and unlike the few existing tax diversification indices, which are constructed only at the state level for the US, is computed at the national level, covering a broad panel of 127 countries over the period 2000-15. We find suggestive evidence that tax revenue diversification reduces tax revenue volatility, thus bringing to the data long-held views about the prominence of tax revenue diversification for fiscal resilience strengthening. While exploring the drivers of the RDI, we find that tax revenue diversification is not just a reflection of economic diversification, but also an outcome of macroeconomic, political and institutional factors. Interestingly, a non-monotone relationship is also at play between the RDI and economic development, with countries’ portfolio of tax sources getting more diversified as their economy develops, until a tipping point, where richer countries start finding it harder to diversify further their tax revenue sources.
Keywords:
WP; yes; diversification index; Revenue volatility; Taxation; Tax revenue diversification; Theil Index; tax revenue; tax source; tax diversification; sources structure; revenue collection; Income tax systems; Consumption taxes; Natural resources; Tax administration core functions; South Asia; North America; North Africa; Middle East; East Africa; diversification pattern; collection performance