Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This paper studies tax withholding on business sales, a widely used compliance mechanism which is largely ignored by public finance theory. The study introduces a withholding scheme, whereby the payer in a transaction collects tax from the payee, in a standard evasion model. If the taxpayer can fully reclaim the tax withheld, withholding is irrelevant to her evasion decision. If reclaim is costly, however, withholding establishes a compliance default. To show this empirically, the analysis exploits a ten-year panel of registration, income tax and sales tax records from 400,000 firms in Costa Rica, and over 20 million third-party information and withholding reports. The paper first documents the anatomy of compliance, providing novel measures of compliance gaps on the extensive, intensive and payment margins. It then shows that interventions leveraging the existing third-party information reduce these compliance gaps only marginally. Coverage by a withholding scheme, in contrast, is correlated with higher reported taxable income both across firms and within firms across time. Quasi-experimental estimations show that a doubling of the withholding rate leads to a 40 percent increase in tax payment among treated firms and a 10 percent increase in aggregate revenue. The mechanisms are incomplete reclaim of the tax withheld and reduced misreporting.

Added Tax. --- Assessment. --- Auction. --- Audit. --- Border Taxes. --- Business Tax. --- Capital Tax. --- Cash Transactions. --- Check. --- Communications. --- Compliance Gap. --- Corporate Income Tax. --- Corporate Tax. --- Corporate Taxation. --- Corporation Tax. --- Credit Card. --- Creditors. --- Customers. --- Debt Markets. --- Debtors. --- Default. --- Derivative. --- Developing Countries. --- Developing Economies. --- Dividend Tax. --- Dividend. --- Dummy Variable. --- Emerging Markets. --- Enforcement Mechanism. --- Enforcement. --- Eveloping Country. --- Exchange. --- Exports. --- Federal Reserve System. --- Federal Reserve. --- Finance and Financial Sector Development. --- Finance. --- Future. --- Goods. --- Governance. --- Government Revenue. --- Holding. --- Income Levels. --- Income Tax. --- Income Volatility. --- Income. --- Input Tax. --- Instrument. --- Interest. --- Internal Revenue. --- International Bank. --- Investment. --- Labor Market. --- Late Payments. --- Law and Development. --- Levies. --- Liability. --- Liquidity. --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth. --- Marginal Tax Rates. --- Market. --- Middle-Income Country. --- Optimal Taxation. --- Output. --- Payment Methods. --- Payment Obligation. --- Personal Income Tax. --- Personal Income. --- Political Economy. --- Power Parity. --- Private Sector Development. --- Property Tax. --- Property. --- Public Finance. --- Remittance. --- Rent. --- Reserve. --- Retirement Savings. --- Return. --- Revenue. --- Risk Aversion. --- Sale of Goods. --- Sales Tax. --- Saving. --- Savings Accounts. --- Share. --- Tax Administration. --- Tax Audit. --- Tax Base. --- Tax Brackets. --- Tax Collection. --- Tax Compliance. --- Tax Credits. --- Tax Enforcement. --- Tax Evasion. --- Tax Incentive. --- Tax Law. --- Tax Liability. --- Tax Payers. --- Tax Rate. --- Tax Reform. --- Tax Reports. --- Tax Return. --- Tax Revenue. --- Tax Sales. --- Tax Structures. --- Tax System. --- Tax. --- Taxable Activities. --- Taxable Income. --- Taxation and Subsidies. --- Taxation. --- Taxpayer Compliance. --- Taxpayer. --- Trade. --- Transaction Cost. --- Transaction. --- Transport Economics Policy and Planning. --- Transport. --- Value Added Tax. --- Volatility. --- Wealth Tax. --- World Development Indicators.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

How is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting firm profits and tax payments in developing countries? This paper uses administrative corporate tax records from 10 low- and middle-income countries around the world to provide plausible estimates. Modeling the lockdown-triggered revenue shock with simple and transparent assumptions, the analysis predicts that less than half of all firms will remain profitable by the end of 2020, about 5-10 percent of the formal aggregate annual payroll will be lost, and firm exit rates will double. As a result, it is expected that tax revenue remitted by the corporate sector will fall by at least 1.5 percent of baseline gross domestic product. Differences in sectoral composition and firms' cost structures generate heterogeneity in the results across countries: wage subsidies are less effective in low-income countries and government revenue losses are smaller.

Administrative Tax Data --- Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies --- Coronavirus --- Corporate Income Tax --- COVID-19 --- Employment and Unemployment --- Firm Exit Rate --- Firm Performance --- Labor Markets --- Lockdown --- Pandemic Impact --- Private Sector Economics --- Revenue Shock --- Taxation and Subsidies --- Wage Subsidy

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

The year 2016 appears to be one of the toughest for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as their governments face serious policy challenges. The biggest challenge for oil exporters is managing their finances and diversification strategies with oil below USD 45 a barrel. Fiscal consolidation in a difficult sociopolitical environment and spillovers from conflicts are creating challenges for oil importers as well. Real GOP growth in MENA for 2016 is projected to fall to its lowest level since 2013 -- 2.3 percent -- lower than last year's growth by half a percentage point and about one percentage point lower than predicted in April 2016. It is clear that the disappointing performance of the MENA economies, and possibly the global economy, is partly due to the rise of terrorist attacks and spread of violent extremism. In this report, we attempt to shed light on the underlying causes of this phenomenon by applying an economic perspective to the demand for and supply of violent extremists. Looking at a dataset on foreign fighters joining Daesh, we find that the factors most strongly associated with foreign individuals' joining Daesh have to do with a lack of inclusion -- economic, social and religious -- in their country of origin. Promoting greater inclusion, therefore, could not only bring down the level of violent extremism, but it could improve economic performance in the MENA region.

Conflict --- Conflict and Development --- Economic Forecasting --- Economic Growth --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poverty Reduction --- Radicalization

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Transnational terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State group (also known as ISIS/ISIL or Daesh) have shown an ability to attract radicalized individuals from many countries to join their ranks. Using a novel data set that reports countries of residence and educational levels of a large sample of Daesh's foreign recruits, this paper finds that a lack of economic opportunities-measured by unemployment rates disaggregated by country and education level-explains foreign enrollment in the terrorist organization, especially for countries that are geographically closer to the Syrian Arab Republic.

Conflict and Development --- Extremism --- Fanatics --- Inclusion --- ISIL --- ISIS --- Radicalization --- Recruitment --- Social Development --- Social Protections and Labor --- Terrorism --- Unemployment --- Violence