Other Public Sector Study
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Publication
Using New Data to Support Tax Treaty Negotiation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07-12)This paper introduces the new Tax Treaties Explorer dataset, developed with support from the World Bank and the G-24, and illustrates its use for research by tax treaty negotiators, policy makers, and researchers. The new dataset provides a rich source of data to reexamine existing tax treaty policy, inform negotiation positions, and assess treaty networks. For the first time, it provides a tool to analyze trends in the content of tax treaties, across individual agreements, over time, and between countries. To illustrate the value of such an approach, we replicate a study by Barthel, Busse, and Neumayer (2009), which found a positive association between the presence of a tax treaty and the bilateral stock of FDI. We show that this effect is mainly driven by the withholding tax rates in the treaty rather than by other provisions affecting taxing rights such as permanent establishment. If the outcomes of this proof-of-concept replication are borne out in future research, this would suggest that negotiators can seek the maximum protection of source taxing rights in other parts of the treaty, knowing that this is unlikely to dilute investment-promoting impacts. -
Publication
Archipelagic Economies: Spatial Economic Development in the Pacific
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07-12)This study explores the far-reaching economic consequences emerging from the archipelagic nature of most Pacific Island countries (PICs). The dispersion of populations across thousands of miles of ocean and hundreds of islands magnifies the economic disadvantages arising from the remoteness and small size that characterize the PICs as a whole. At the same time, population dispersion creates extraordinary challenges related to public service delivery, connectivity, migration and urbanization, and the equity and inclusiveness of economic development. This study focuses on these challenges in pursuit of two main objectives: deepening the understanding of socio-economic conditions on the PICs’ outer islands and the drivers of migration from outer islands to main islands; and reviewing the policy and investment options for fostering the socio-economic development of outer islands populations. This overview summarizes the main findings in five parts. First, the authors present the objectives and outline of the full report. This is followed by a section which explains how the PICs’ external and internal geography are key determinants of socio-economic development outcomes and spatial inequalities. The third part presents data on spatial inequality with respect to a range of socio-economic indicators, public services, connectivity, and migration. In the fourth part, the authors discuss interactions between geographic dispersion and key political economy issues that shape spatial economic policy decisions and outcomes. The report concludes with a summary of policy options for dealing with the development challenges arising from geographic dispersion. -
Publication
COVID-19: Tax Policy and Revenue Administration Implications
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-22)This note brings together current thinking among global and regional teams on governance and institutional approaches to dealing with COVID-19. With a focus on tax policy and revenue administrations, it presents governance and institutional reforms that could support revenue administration responses to the pandemic.1 COVID-19 has brought about a new normal in which work practices should change. Shocks usually trigger responses, and a productive response here will be to automate tax and customs services over the medium term and to massively accelerate the use of digital and virtual technologies. -
Publication
Ghana: Enhancing Revenue Mobilization Through Improved Tax Compliance and Administrative Systems
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-11-13)Ghana’s tax collection is low compared with other lower middle-income countries. Non-compliance of tax payments is an urgent issue in Ghana, as the government has been suffering from a widening fiscal deficit and a rising debt burden. Learning from experiences in other countries, this report proposes potential interventions that could improve tax compliance. -
Publication
Ghana Tax Gap Analysis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-11-13)The objective of this report is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the tax gap in Ghana, and help the Government of Ghana identify the areas where they can increase tax revenue by improving compliance. Tax gap for corporate income tax, import tax, estimated value added tax, and potential tax revenue from formalization of informal firms were investigated. -
Publication
Chatbots for Third-Party Monitoring: CivicTech Pilot in Madagascar
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)Growing evidence confirms that citizen engagement is key to improving the delivery and quality of public services, management of public finances, and to promoting social inclusion, resulting in tangible improvements in people’s lives. The advent and availability of new technologies provide new opportunities to reach citizens, aggregate their ‘voice’ and demand, help governments respond, and partner with citizens to find and implement solutions collectively. With the right approach, CivicTech enables citizens to overcome income, social, and geographical barriers to interact with governments and participate at the local or national level. The CivicTech pilot in Madagascar supported the development of a Facebook ChatBot (bot) to enable third-party monitoring of service delivery operations for the Madagascar Public Sector Performance Project (PAPSP, P150116). A similar approach could be replicated for Community Driven Development (CDD) projects and local government and decentralized service delivery projects to achieve a multi-channel structure for third-party monitoring (offline, mobile, and web). The note documents the CivicTech pilot experience in Madagascar and lessons learned. -
Publication
Citizen Engagement in Operations: A Stock-Take of Citizen Engagement in Development Policy Financing
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)Guided by the 2014 Strategic Framework for Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement in World Bank Group Operations, the World Bank supports policies, programs, projects, and advisory services and analytics where citizen engagement (CE) can improve development results. While the corporate commitment to mainstream CE targets investment operations, the World Bank teams continue to explore CE in other instruments. Engaging Citizens for Better Development Results, a report by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), assessed the Bank Group’s efforts to mainstream CE. It recommends the World Bank “encourage and support efforts of its regional, country, and Global Practices teams to establish, where appropriate, thick CE that is regular and continuous, uses multiple tools, and is embedded in country systems.” It also suggests this objective could be achieved by more systematically using existing channels of dialogue and stakeholder engagement, including that of Development Policy Financing (DPF), and applying tools at the various levels. Given this context, this Governance Note aims to take stock of existing CE practice in DPF by shedding light on the prior action usage. -
Publication
Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement through the World Bank Group’s Country Engagement Model
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-01)Efforts to mainstream citizen engagement into the Country Partnership Framework (CPF) cycle have the potential to contribute toward achieving country development goals and the World Bank Group’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity by maximizing the impact of citizen-centric initiatives. Informed by the findings of a desk review of the Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) and corresponding CPF from FY14 to FY19, this technical note is intended to serve as a resource for World Bank task teams to elaborate on options and entry points for systematic mainstreaming of citizen engagement in the CPF cycle, specifically in preparing the SCDs, CPFs, Performance and Learning Reviews, and Completion and Learning Reviews. -
Publication
The Welfare and Distributional Effects of Increasing Taxes on Tobacco in Vietnam
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06)This paper assesses the welfare and distributional effects of raising taxes on tobaccoin Vietnam. Tobacco taxes are recognized as effective policy tools to reduce tobaccoconsumption and to improve health outcomes. However, policy makers often hesitateto use them because of claims of their potentially regressive effects. According to thoseclaims, poorer households are particularly hurt by tobacco tax policies, as cigarettepurchases represent a larger share of their budgets relative to higher-income smokers.The paper argues that the claims on the regressive effects of tobacco tax policies arebased on naive, shortsighted, and incorrect estimations. Tobacco-related illnessesdamage health outcomes and the quality of the lives of smokers and their families, whilethey also cost billions of dollars in medical expenditures and losses in human capital andproductivity every year. Tobacco consumption imposes heavy economic burdens onhouseholds and governments, in addition to its well-known negative health and socialimpacts. Raising taxes on cigarettes dissuades consumption, hence improving healthoutcomes, adverting premature deaths, and reducing direct and indirect economic costs.The analysis applies the Extended Cost Benefit Analysis (ECBA) methodology to simulateempirically the costs, as well as the benefits of increasing the prices on cigarettes onthe welfare of Vietnamese households. Following a well-established body of literature,the ECBA acknowledges that there may be short-term direct negative effects of raisingprices on tobacco, as smokers can struggle to continue to purchase tobacco with theirunchanged household budgets. However, the model also incorporates two of the mainbenefits of reducing tobacco consumption by increasing taxes: (a) the reduction insmoking-related medical expenses borne by households and (b) the additional incomesthat households can earn by preventing years of productive life lost due to smoking attributablepremature deaths. A critical contribution of the ECBA is to incorporate decile-specific price elasticities of demand for cigarettes, to quantify the behavioral responses or sensitivity of smokers in different income groups to changes in cigarette prices. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first available empirical exercise to estimate price elasticities by income decile in Vietnam. Consistent with the literature and with empirical findings in other countries, the price elasticities of demand for cigarettes are larger for lower-income households. Lower income smokers are likely to reduce their tobacco consumption more drastically, when faced with a price increase. The ultimate distributional effect on welfare of the increasein the price of cigarettes due to tax increases will then depend on assessing the potentialbenefits against the short-term costs. -
Publication
Guinea - Opportunities for Enhanced Domestic Revenue Mobilization: Value-Added Tax and Excise Taxes
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-05-01)Revenue mobilization is a key constraint to economic development in the Republic of Guinea. The government’s five-year development plan (2016-2020) aims at fostering higher and more inclusive growth through public investments that require financing beyond current fiscal capacity. In this context, Guinea is seeking to efficiently raise additional domestic revenues and external investment financing. Development partners are supporting Guinea with technical assistance for revenue mobilization. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union are supporting authorities with direct tax policy, non-tax revenue, and administration issues. The objective of this report is to shed light on indirect taxes, particularly value-added tax (VAT) and excise taxes. The report provides an overview of the main features of tax policy and administration in Guinea, followed by a more detailed analysis of VAT and excise taxes. The focus on indirect taxation is a result of both its significant revenue potential and coordination with other development partners. The analysis presented fills an important gap in the understanding of how Guinea can increase its tax revenues. On VAT, the study finds that addressing policy and administrative constraints can mobilize additional revenues while improving the business climate. On excise taxation, the study finds that existing excise rates are unevenly applied, with scope for raising rates in the future. To systematically address its revenue challenges across all tax types, Guinea should also consider development of a medium-term revenue strategy (MTRS). The report is structured as follows: in the first section, an overview of the evolution and composition of domestic revenues in Guinea is presented. In the second section, VAT is analyzed. The final section reviews excise tax policy and its implementation on international goods and domestic goods.