Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes
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Publication Sex-disaggregating Tax Administrative Data: Experience from Colombia’s Tax and Customs Authority(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-06) Gamboa, Luis Fernando; Reyes, Luis Carlos; Tribin, Ana Maria; Komatsu, HitomiThis Knowledge Note aims to document National Tax and Customs Authority's (DIAN’s) experience in sex-disaggregating income taxpayer data and provide examples of the use of disaggregated data for policy analysis. It offers lessons for other revenue authorities and government agencies planning to sex-disaggregate and analyze administrative tax data. It summarizes the institutional strategies, methodologies used, and challenges encountered in this process based on interviews with experts and government officials. We use the term “sex” to mean biological sex at birth unless explicitly stated otherwise.Publication Saving Lives While Raising Revenue: Opportunities in Brazil’s Reform of Indirect Taxes to Improve Tobacco, Alcohol, and Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSBs) Excise Taxes(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-04) Maldonado, N.; Blecher, E.; Fleischhaker, C.Taxes and prices of tobacco products, alcoholic beverages, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in Brazil are low compared to international peers. The ongoing landmark reform of indirect taxes (PLP 68/2024 and forthcoming Ordinary Law) provides an excellent opportunity to put in place well-designed excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol and SSBs.If well implemented, reforms of the tax structure and increases in tax rates can make them more effective at improving population health and raising additional tax revenue. Global evidence to support reforms is strong, supporting the use of well-designed and administered health taxes.Following global best practices, it is recommended that health taxes are focused on specific taxes or, when applied in mixed systems, that the specific taxes comprise a larger component of the excise tax than the ad valorem component. Tax rates, particularly for specific taxes, need to be increased significantly to align Brazil with the prices of international peers, and indexed to inflation plus three percentage points to protect real values of tax over time, and to reduce the affordability of tobacco, alcohol, and SSBs.Publication Distributional Impacts of Brazil’s Tax Reform: scenarios regarding Cesta Básica exemption(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-10-31) Vale, Ricardo; Lara Ibarra, Gabriel; Fleury, Eduardo; Trzcinski, KajetanA consumption tax reform in Brazil has been recently approved by the House of Representatives, providing a full tax exemption for the yet undefined ‘National Basic Basket’ of goods (cesta basica nacional), alongside a cashback scheme that is yet to be determined. This note simulates the distributional impacts of different fiscally neutral scenarios of reduced rates and exemptions. The authors show that the exemption of taxes for food and personal care goods (such as those suggested by Law 10,925) would benefit the most vulnerable. Nonetheless, overall expenditures on certain items that are being considered for inclusion in the cesta are relatively concentrated on households in the top decile of the income distribution. Thus, a blanket exemption on Cesta Basica items may benefit the richest more in absolute terms. If the list of items in the exempted Cesta Basica is shortened and the equivalent resources of the potential forgone revenues are returned into a targeted cashback scheme, a far less regressive indirect tax system could be achieved.Publication G2PX in Nigeria: Piloting Rapid Response for the Urban Informal(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-10-23) Webster, Brian; Ubah, Ubah Thomas; Pulver, CarolineTo provide assistance related to COVID-19 and to inform future shock response, Nigeria piloted digital delivery of a cash transfer program geared toward reaching the urban informal. The pilot made use of mobile technology and direct deposit, but it relied on in-person site visits and struggled to make full use of available data, hindering implementation speed. Low account penetration among informal populations and inadequate access points, among other issues plaguing the financial ecosystem, added to sluggish rollouts during pilots. While the program evolved significantly over time, incorporating the lessons from the pilots, the lack of monitoring and evaluation data prevent a full understanding of its ultimate effectiveness.Publication COVID-19 in Papua New Guinea: Economic and Social Impacts - Insights from the Fifth Round of High Frequency Phone Surveys(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-05-31) World BankThe fifth round of the high frequency phone survey (HFPS) interviewed 2,630 households in June 2022 on the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19, including employment and income, community trust and security and COVID-19 vaccination. It follows four rounds of surveys conducted from June 2020 to December 2021. The previous round of the HFPS (round 4), found that recovery was weak in 2021, with household incomes falling, and highlighted persistently low COVID-19 vaccination rates. While the third wave of COVID-19 was over by June 2022, PNG remains the least vaccinated country in the EAP region and could be vulnerable to future outbreaks of COVID-19. The World Bank estimates that the PNG economy contracted by 3.5 percent in 2020 before returning to positive economic growth of 1 percent in 2021. Stronger economic growth is projected for 2022, of 4 percent. In particular, strong growth is projected for the extractive sector (6.8 percent). However, the trajectory of economic recovery remains highly uncertain.Publication Brazil – COVID-19 in Latin America and Caribbean: 2021 High Frequency Phone Surveys - Results Phase Two, Wave One(Washington, DC, 2022-04) World BankBrazil has been one of the countries most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the region. In June 2021, it was the country with the second-highest rate of deaths per million and the fourth by the number of cases per million in Latin America and the Caribbean. The effects of the health crisis were broad and still evident a year and a half into the pandemic. In line with pre-existing vulnerability profiles, the pandemic affected the Brazilian population differently in the labor market. At the time of the survey, the proportion of people who lost their pre-pandemic job and were not working was 29.1 percent. This proportion was highest among the elderly (57.8 percent), those with primary education or less (42.7 percent), women (41.4 percent) and rural workers (38.7 percent). About 58 percent of those who lost their jobs became inactive, and most of the new inactive were women (68.9 percent). Simultaneously, 29.2 percent of the previously inactive entered the labor force during the pandemic, though one-quarter of them were unemployed in mid-2021. Women represented a majority among the new active (64.3 percent). Finally, the pandemic resulted in higher informality rates among those who remained employed.Publication Leadership Training Toolkit for State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs): Boards and Owners(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-06-30) World Bank; International Finance CorporationThe Leadership Training Toolkit for State-Owned Enterprises (‘SOE Leadership Toolkit’) was developed jointly by the World Bank and IFC (World Bank Group) to support countries’ efforts to build capacity of State ownership entities, SOE boards, and SOE senior management. It addresses the growing need for curricula specifically adapted for SOEs, considering the significant role and impact of SOEs on public finances, the economy and delivery of public services. The SOE Leadership Toolkit is a global public good that can be used by different training providers, such as government training institutions, Institutes of Directors, corporate governance and ESG associations, and professional bodies or universities. It is designed to: • Advance corporate governance reforms by instilling in participants leadership values that can help them work within their companies or organizations to adopt the best practices • Foster a common understanding between state ownership and oversight entities and SOE leadership, by raising awareness of the respective roles and perspectives • Provide flexibility through a modular curriculum that allows a country and training institution to easily tailor programs to suit their specific context and target audience • Engage executive learners through experiential learning and interactive exercises, based on internationally recognized good practices and global priorities such as climate change and gender • Minimize training providers’ investment of time and resources for curriculum development by providing a comprehensive, standardized curriculum that includes handouts, and case studies The 15 training modules are structured in four parts. Each module includes specific topics, case studies and exercises. Cutting across these modules are four themes assuming an important place in today’s corporate governance landscape: 1) gender and diversity, 2) climate risk and resilience, 3) Maximizing Finance for Development, 4) corruption and integrity.