Many governments around the world are making less information available about how they raise and spend public money, according to the results of the International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey 2017.
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By Jun 07, 2018
This paper provides a guide to assessing a country’s overall framework for establishing, reporting on, and evaluating tax expenditures using criteria that characterizes a good tax system: transparency, accountability, equity, efficiency, and adequacy.
By Jun 07, 2018
This guide provides an introduction to approaches that can be used to develop a research and advocacy plan for those who are new to analyzing taxes and tax expenditures in Latin America. It focuses on how to define the problem you wish to research and the sources of information that can be used to understand and develop possible solutions.
By Jun 07, 2018
Taxation is an important policy tool for promoting revenue mobilization and economic development. However, it also has important implications in terms of inequality. In countries where inequality is increasing, the redistributive role of taxation has appeared as a central element of policy discussions and research analyses. This paper contributes to the debate by focusing on the case of Latin America. It describes the evolution of taxation and its redistributive implications for the region over the last few decades.
By Jun 07, 2018
This paper explores one aspect of tax policy — tax expenditures — and its impact on inequality in Latin America. Tax expenditures are provisions that reduce the amount of tax that is paid by providing special treatment to a particular class of individual, industry, or activity. They can impact inequality directly, by giving preference to certain groups over others, or indirectly, by reducing the revenues available for redistributive spending. Tax expenditures are significant in the Latin American context because of the magnitude of the revenue loss they cause and the resulting impact on public spending.
By Apr 30, 2018
Each year Kenya’s Parliament must decide how national revenue will be shared between national and county governments. This discussion is informed by recommendations from the Commission on Revenue Allocation and the National Treasury. This analysis compares the recommendations made by both agencies and explores the main drivers of their differences.
By Apr 16, 2018
This paper examines evidence from a sampling of counties in Kenya to determine the impact of devolution on the health sector. It looks at the distribution of health workers in Elgeyo Marakwet, Bungoma, Kilifi, West Pokot, Samburu, Turkana, and Baringo counties to understand what changes have taken place in terms of the number and skills of health workers during the devolution era (2014-2017).
By Apr 11, 2018
While discussions of equity and marginalization in Kenya have traditionally focused on revenue sharing among counties, data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and the Society for International Development shows that inequalities are just as severe below the county level. This paper looks at several approaches Kenya counties have taken to distribute resources through their budgets to determine if these approaches address intra-county inequalities.
By Feb 28, 2018
The County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP) is a plan prepared by all counties in Kenya to guide development over a five-year period. Kenya’s Public Finance Management Act provides that no public funds shall be appropriated outside a county’s planning framework. The CIDP should contain information on development priorities that inform the annual budget process, particularly the preparation of annual development plans, the annual county fiscal strategy papers, and the annual budget estimates. This guide examines how to read and analyze a CIDP and is useful during the preparation, validation, and approval stages of the CIDP process.
By Feb 16, 2018
This paper assesses the climate finance accountability landscape in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and the Philippines and examines how government, formal oversight institutions, civil society, citizens, and media in each country engage in decision making and monitoring of the use of public funds for climate action. The report establishes a climate finance accountability framework and aims to draw lessons and guide actors — both global and domestic — on entry points to strengthen systems.
By Jan 31, 2018
Dissatisfaction with the way in which resources have been shared in Kenya has colored the country’s post-independence history and has been a key driver of legal and fiscal reform. While principles of equity have informed many fiscal reforms, there remains little discussion of equity in regard to the massive funds that remain with the national government, which spends the largest share of revenue through its Ministries, Departments and Agencies. This budget brief looks at the geographical distribution of capital projects in the State Department for Infrastructure and State Department for Water Services in Kenya’s 2016/17 budget.
