A well-designed internal administrative process for reviewing tax decisions can contribute toeconomic efficiency, competitiveness, and growth by accurately identifying errors in tax administration, lowering compliance costs for taxpayers, and enhancing the credibility and popularlegitimacy of the tax regime.
... See More + This toolkit describes the administrative processes that various jurisdictions in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) use to review tax decisions and analyzes their relative efficiency and effectiveness. The toolkit is designed to provide policymakers, tax officials, donor agencies, and development partners with a framework for improving the business climate by enhancing the quality of the administrative tax-review process, and it offers practical advice for designing and implementing tax-review procedures based on good-practice principles derived from the international experience. While the toolkit focuses on the LAC region, its conclusions and guidelines are directly applicable to countries around the world. After providing an overview of the key concepts of administrative tax review, the toolkit describes the most salient lessons learned from the international experience, examines recent global trends and innovations, and explores the tax-review mechanisms used by 23 countries in the LAC region. This approach reveals how various concepts apply in practice while highlighting priority areas forreform. The toolkit’s detailed account of the most common tax-review issues facing LAC countriesis designed to inform national strategies for improving tax administration. The toolkit also offersan analysis of cutting-edge developments in information and communications technology and theirpotential to strengthen various aspects of administrative tax review. It concludes by underscoringthe key role that an effective communications strategy plays in the successful implementation oftax-administration reforms. The toolkit draws on three main sources of information: (i) the experience gained by the World Bank Group through more than 20 years of engagement in tax policy, (ii) the international literature on tax policies and systems, and (iii) a survey examining tax administration and related issues in 23 LAC countries. The analysis is based primarily on data collected in 2016, and thus it may not fully reflect the latest round of reforms in all countries.
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After mediocre growth in 2018 of 0.7 percent. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is expected to perform only marginally better in 2019 (growth of 0.9 percent) followed by a much more solid growth of 2.1 percent in 2020.
... See More + LAC will face both internal and external challenges during 2019. On the domestic front. the recession in Argentina; a slower than expected recovery in Brazil from the 2014-2015 recession, anemic growth in Mexico. and the continued deterioration of Venezuela. present the biggest challenges. On the external front. the sharp drop in net capital inflows to the region since early 2018 and the monetary policy normalization in the United States stand among the greatest perils. Furthermore, the recent increase in poverty in Brazil because of the recession points to the large effects that the business cycle may have on poverty. The core of this report argues that social indicators that are very sensitive to the business cycle may yield a highly misleading picture of permanent social gains in the region.
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After mediocre growth in 2018 of 0.7 percent. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is expected to perform only marginally better in 2019 (growth of 0.9 percent) followed by a much more solid growth of 2.1 percent in 2020.
... See More + LAC will face both internal and external challenges during 2019. On the domestic front. the recession in Argentina; a slower than expected recovery in Brazil from the 2014-2015 recession, anemic growth in Mexico. and the continued deterioration of Venezuela. present the biggest challenges. On the external front. the sharp drop in net capital inflows to the region since early 2018 and the monetary policy normalization in the United States stand among the greatest perils. Furthermore, the recent increase in poverty in Brazil because of the recession points to the large effects that the business cycle may have on poverty. The core of this report argues that social indicators that are very sensitive to the business cycle may yield a highly misleading picture of permanent social gains in the region.
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This paper investigates the relative importance of different channels in explaining the low share of industrial employment in Latin America relative to the economies that employ a large share of the workforce in industry.
... See More + Differences in domestic final consumption shares play a pivotal role and can account for 50-70 percent of the industrial share gap. The paper finds limited support for the comparative advantage hypothesis, as differences in trading patterns account for less than 15 percent of the gap. More important are the differences in sectoral linkages and wage gaps which account for more than 30 percent of the industrial employment gap individually.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8791 MAR 25, 2019
This gender and energy training has been developed based on role playing, to maximize participant engagement and interaction. This guidebook aims to enable practitioners to conduct role-playing training in gender and energy and demonstrate the World Bank Group (WBG) gender tag methodology applied to International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Development Association (IBRD and IDA) projects.
... See More + It presents the methodology and training material and provides a number of case studies. Training material consists of four types of cards - gender gaps, gender data, case studies, and character profiles - and is easily customizable and can be applied to other case studies, in other sectors as well.
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Esta publicación fue elaborada como parte del componente de Gestión del Conocimiento del Programa de Simplificación Tributaria en Latinoamérica y el Caribe (LACTAX).
... See More + El informe identifica y analiza las mejores prácticas en los servicios de defensa al contribuyente en México, Perú y Colombia, enfocándose en aquellas que facilitan el cumplimiento de las obligaciones fiscales y mejoran las relaciones entre las Autoridades Tributarias y los contribuyentes. Además, se establece la importancia de estos organismos en la conformación de sistemas tributarios justos, particularmente para las MIPYMEs.
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The impact of urban form on economic performance and quality of life has been extensively recognized. The studies on urban form have focused in developed countries; only a few cities in developing countries have been studied.
... See More + This paper utilizes nighttime lights imagery and information on street networks, automatically retrieved from OpenStreetMap, to calculate a series of spatial metrics that capture different aspects of the urban form of 919 Latin American and Caribbean cities. The paper classifies these cities into clusters according to these spatial metrics. It also studies the relationship between the urban form metrics and some factors that can correlate with urban form (topography, size, colony, and economic performance) and performs a spatio-temporal analysis of urban growth from 1996 to 2010. Among the results, the paper highlights the identification of five typologies of cities, the tendency of a group of cities to grow at a steeper slope, some worrying cases of urban growth over protected areas, and a trend toward increasing sprawl in some Latin American and Caribbean cities.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8702 JAN 15, 2019
This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of institutional fragmentation and metropolitan coordination on urban productivity in Latin American cities.
... See More + The use of night-time lights satellite imagery and high-resolution population data allow the use of a broader definition of metropolitan area. Thus, metropolitan area consists of the urban extent that results from the union between the formally defined metropolitan area and the contiguous patches of urbanized areas with more that 500,000 inhabitants. The initial results suggest that the presence of multiple local governments within metropolitan areas generates opposite effects on urban productivity. On the one hand, smaller governments tend to be more responsive and efficient, which increases productivity. But, on the other hand, multiple local governments face coordination costs that reduce productivity.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8696 JAN 10, 2019
This paper examines the linkages between urban form and city productivity, using alternative metrics for urban form and applying them to a comprehensive sample of Latin American cities.
... See More + Although most of the literature has concentrated on the effects of population density (compact versus sprawling urban development), this paper seeks to assess whether different dimensions of a city's urban form, such as shape, structure, and land-use, affect its economic performance. The paper finds that the shape of the urban extent, the inner-city connectedness, and fullness have a statistically significant influence on the productivity level of the city.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8697 JAN 10, 2019
