A Poverty-Focused Evaluation of Commodity Tax Options

Essama-Nssah, B.

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ABSOLUTE VALUE;    ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS;    AGGREGATE DEMAND;    AGGREGATE POVERTY;    BENCHMARK;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4245
RP-ID  :  WPS4245

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The difficulties faced by manydeveloping countries in raising revenue from direct taxeshave forced them to rely heavily on indirect taxes tofinance development interventions. The purpose of this paperis to show how to identify socially desirable options forcommodity taxation in the context of a poverty reductionstrategy. Within the logic of social evaluation the authorassesses tax options on the basis of value judgmentsunderlying members of the additively separable class ofpoverty measures. The criterion hinges on both the patternof consumption of each commodity and the price elasticity ofthe poverty measure used. An application of this methodologyto data for Guinea shows that many components of foodexpenditure (particularly cereals, grains, and roots) wouldbe good candidates for exemption from value-added tax. Eventhough expenditure on health and education is distributed infavor of the non-poor, their importance for human capitaldevelopment argues for a program of targeted subsidies in abroader context of cost recovery.