Widespread voluntary tax compliance plays a significant role in countries’ efforts to raise the revenues necessary to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. As part of this process, governments are increasingly reaching out to taxpayers – current and future – to teach, communicate and assist them in order to foster a “culture of compliance” based on rights and responsibilities, in which citizens see paying taxes as an integral aspect of their relationship with their government.
This publication examines the taxation of SMEs in OECD countries and covers a broad range of SME taxation issues, including possible effects of taxation on the creation and growth of SMEs, and considerations arising from a relatively high compliance burden.
This first comprehensive study of the interaction between technology and taxation approaches the subject along four main avenues: insight and analysis gained from empirical legal studies conducted in the area of taxation; methods for improving the control and management of the tax function in business; tax auditing through statistical sampling; and changes in the fiscal environment as a result of technological capabilities. Among the topics that arise are the following: what choices of sampling methodology exist; determination of both one-sided and two-sided confidence intervals; under what circumstances statistical sampling is acceptable as proof of underpayment and as a basis for penalties; the use of sampling agreements as a tool to improve taxpayers’ understanding of the process; complexities encountered by the introduction of technology in tax administration in developing countries; technological capability to detect economic activity in the informal sector; technological innovation as substitute for inadequate human capacity; improvements available to better monitor the movement and values of goods entering a country; safeguards to prevent unauthorized use of personal information; prioritizing resources to ensure that the key strategic objectives of the agency are being addressed; government defensive action and the threat to privacy; and capabilities and limitations of enterprise resource planning systems and tax engines. Although the author pays especially detailed attention to the technologies developed and used by the United States Internal Revenue Service, other notable systems developed by the European Union, Brazil, Mexico, and China are also examined. Various sampling methods and practices are illustrated with numerical examples. As tax systems acquire ever higher levels of integration, and because accuracy is crucial to the measurement of tax compliance, the perspectives opened and expertly analyzed by the author will prove of great importance. Practitioners, tax policymakers and administrators, tax standard setters, and tribunals dealing with disputes over tax administration and procedure, as well as academics and researchers, will instantly recognize the book’s great importance and practical value.
The authors observe that consumption taxation is superior to income taxation because it does not penalize saving and investment and propose that the U.S. income tax system be completely replaced by a progressive consumption tax. They argue that the X tax, developed by the late David Bradford, offers the best form of progressive consumption taxation for the United States and outline concrete proposals for the X tax's treatment of numerous specific economic issues.
This report is the ninth edition of the OECD's Tax Administration Series. It provides internationally comparative data on aspects of tax systems and their administration in 59 advanced and emerging economies.
Tax Administration 2015 is a comprehensive survey of tax administration systems, practices and performance across 56 advanced and emerging economies (including all OECD, EU, and G20 members).
The OECD Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2018 is the twelfth edition in a series that biennially reviews key trends in science, technology and innovation (STI) policy in OECD countries and a number of major partner economies. The 14 chapters within this edition look at a range of ...
This paper examines the impact of e-invoicing on firm tax compliance and performance using administrative tax data and quasi-experimental variation in the rollout of VAT electronic invoicing in Peru. We find that e-invoicing increases reported firm sales, purchases and value-added by over 5 percent in the first year after adoption. The impact is concentrated among smaller firms and sectors with higher rates of non-compliance, suggesting that e-invoicing enhances compliance by lowering compliance costs and strengthening deterrence. The reform’s positive effects on tax collection are hindered by shortcomings in the VAT refund mechanism in Peru, suggesting that digital tools such as e-invoicing should be complemented by other reforms to improve revenue mobilization.
A groundbreaking history of why governments do—and don't—tax the rich In today's social climate of acknowledged and growing inequality, why are there not greater efforts to tax the rich? In this wide-ranging and provocative book, Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage ask when and why countries tax their wealthiest citizens—and their answers may surprise you. Taxing the Rich draws on unparalleled evidence from twenty countries over the last two centuries to provide the broadest and most in-depth history of progressive taxation available. Scheve and Stasavage explore the intellectual and political debates surrounding the taxation of the wealthy while also providing the most detailed examination to date of when taxes have been levied against the rich and when they haven't. Fairness in debates about taxing the rich has depended on different views of what it means to treat people as equals and whether taxing the rich advances or undermines this norm. Scheve and Stasavage argue that governments don't tax the rich just because inequality is high or rising—they do it when people believe that such taxes compensate for the state unfairly privileging the wealthy. Progressive taxation saw its heyday in the twentieth century, when compensatory arguments for taxing the rich focused on unequal sacrifice in mass warfare. Today, as technology gives rise to wars of more limited mobilization, such arguments are no longer persuasive. Taxing the Rich shows how the future of tax reform will depend on whether political and economic conditions allow for new compensatory arguments to be made.
