Taxation: A summary of IGC research

This sub-thematic summary highlights the IGC’s research on taxation over the past 10 years.

Effective taxation systems are essential for enabling governments, at all levels, to generate the revenues needed to finance the services, infrastructure, and investment necessary to drive economic growth. Despite their importance, however, tax systems are often a neglected element of economic development policy. Developing countries typically have low tax-to-GDP ratios of 10% to 15%, compared to ratios around 40% in more developed countries.

The IGC works closely with its partner governments to promote effective tax policies and systems and increase revenue generation and compliance. Historically, research and analysis on these important policy issues have been surprisingly limited, due in part to the sensitivity of tax reform and low availability of data. The IGC’s established relationships at the highest levels of government has made it possible to develop strong partnerships with revenue authorities, enabling it to develop collaborative strategies and gain access or generate the needed data to tackle pressing challenges in tax policy and administration.

This paper looks at our work more broadly and focuses on five areas: tax design, tax enforcement, tax morale, tax administration and local taxation.