TaxDev policy conference

Governments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) need to raise sufficient tax revenues in order to invest in human and physical capital and expand social protection programmes. Such investments will be vital to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. But effective tax systems are about more than raising revenue, and understanding the distributional and behavioural impacts of policies is vital if policymakers are to ensure that their tax systems support inclusive growth and avoid potentially damaging economic distortions.

The Centre for Tax Analysis in Developing Countries (TaxDev) is a DFID-funded research centre which aims to contribute to more effective tax policymaking through research and applied policy analysis in partnership with governments in LMICs. The Centre was established in response to the relative paucity of theoretical and empirical evidence on tax policy in LMICs and draws on almost 50 years of IFS experience of analysing and influencing tax policy in the UK.

At this event, researchers presented work that that has been undertaken since TaxDev began in Spring 2016 and Michael Keen, Deputy Director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, gave a keynote address on tax and development in LMICs. Policymakers from Ghana provided insights from collaborative analytical projects that they have conducted with TaxDev researchers to address some of the key tax policy issues that they face.  Presentations covered issues such as the impacts of taxes and transfers on income distributions in LMICs, analysis of how taxpayers respond to the incentives created by tax systems, and examples of how these responses can be incorporated into analysis.

Conference presentations are available here.