Open Budgets Blog | International Budget Partnership

Civil Society Groups Across Latin America are Starting to Question Tax Expenditures

By Paolo de Renzio and Alexandre Ciconello, International Budget Partnership — Mar 21, 2019

The International Budget Partnership has been working with a group of nine Latin American civil society organizations to promote research, advocacy, and learning around tax expenditures in the Latin American region. Recently, each group conducted research to examine how governments were using tax expenditures in their countries and to assess the impact of tax expenditures on inequality. Read more about how these groups are using their research findings to promote advocacy campaigns.

Fiscal Futures: The End of Sovereignty and the Influence of Corporate Power are Twin Challenges to Fiscal Governance

by Benjamin Cokelet, Founding Co-Executive Director, PODER— Mar 20, 2019

The power of transnational corporations and global economic and monetary institutions to influence national budgetary and financial decisions is overwhelming. Is it time for advocates to focus fiscal transparency and accountability efforts on the power of global capital?

Fiscal Futures: Will China Offer an Alternative Development Model?

By Christine Wong, Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Melbourne— Mar 13, 2019

The results-based, pragmatic approach to politics associated with “Chinese-style democracy” may look attractive to countries seeking to kickstart development, but the authoritarian aspect of the model, along with its economic foundations, may be unsustainable.

Budget Credibility: Is the Government Doing What It’s Saying and Saying What It’s Doing?

Jason Lakin, International Budget Partnership— Mar 07, 2019

When the International Budget Partnership put out an open call for 25 civil society organizations to research budget credibility issues in their countries last year, we thought we would struggle to reach that number. But more than 70 groups applied, and their research was just one component of our larger Assessing Budget Credibility project, which looks at the degree to which governments raise and spend public money in accordance with approved budgets, and the causes and consequences of any deviations.

Fiscal Futures: Can We Turn Tax Competition into Tax Cooperation?

by Didier Jacobs, Senior Policy Advisor, Oxfam America— Mar 06, 2019

Governments are engaged in a race to the bottom on corporate taxation. Tax rates are falling and tax incentives are multiplying. This is bad news when it comes to financing development. Citizens must demand transparency and accountability regarding tax incentives, and regional and global cooperation to set a floor under corporate tax rates.

Fiscal Futures: Targets for Equity Enhancing Tax Advocacy

By Wilson Prichard— Feb 27, 2019

Despite evidence of high and frequently rising inequality across much of the developing world, strengthening the equity of tax systems has usually been low on the agenda. However, there is a persuasive argument that civil society actors should place a significant advocacy focus on improving the overall equity of tax systems for technical, political, and strategic reasons.

Fiscal Futures: Debt is Eating Up Government Revenues and Undermining the Sustainable Development Goals

by Nathan Coplin and Jaime Atienza, Oxfam— Feb 20, 2019

Improving domestic revenue mobilization can help low-income countries meet development challenges, but if rising debt costs are not addressed, these revenues will not give governments the fiscal space they need to invest in citizens and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Fiscal Futures: Does the Expansion of Foreign Debt Threaten Fiscal Transparency?

by Vivek Ramkumar, Senior Director of Policy, International Budget Partnership— Feb 13, 2019

The increase in low- and middle-income countries’ borrowing from the private sector and China has negative implications for the fiscal transparency of emerging market governments in the near term. How can fiscal transparency and accountability advocates respond?

Putting the ‘Public’ Back Into Public Finance: How Better Budgets Can Save Democracy

by Paolo de Renzio, International Budget Partnership— Feb 06, 2019

Public finance and government budgets are things few people get excited about, but they affect every one of us much more than we think. What would public finance that puts the public good — human beings with their needs and aspirations — at the center of government policy-making look like? And could this re-framing of public finance be the key to democratic renewal?

Fiscal Futures: Can Public Finance Save Democracy?

by David Lewis, Executive Director, Corruption Watch— Jan 30, 2019

The relationship between declining democracy and burgeoning corruption, both the antithesis of fiscal accountability, raises some large and complex questions for the fiscal accountability community.