H:\AAWBANK\AAACurrent-draft-July2003.doc
International Experiences with Administration of Local Taxes:
A Review of Practices and Issues
John L. Mikesell
Professor of Public Finance and Policy Analysis
School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
2
1. Introduction
Many countries, including but not limited to those in the group of developing and transition
nations, have concentrated taxing authority and tax administration with the central government.
However, there is a spreading sense that local governments throughout the world are growing up
(Bahl, 1999), that they no longer require central government guidance and control for them to
make a positive contribution to provision and delivery of government services, that they can and
should assume more responsibility for finance of those services, and that bringing decisions
closer to the people, the voters, will improve government efficiency, effectiveness, and
responsiveness. An important element in the case for subnational revenue-raising responsibility
is the idea that governments should face at least part of the political consequences of obtaining
resources to provide services.
As nations give local and regional governments significant authority to levy taxes and
responsibility to finance independently a greater share of the cost of the services they provide,
there are two significant lessons from international experience that they should keep in mind.
First, international experience clearly demonstrates that taxes need not be administered by the
government that levies them. Giving subnational governments meaningful authority to tax gives
them power to adjust the size of their budgets and to establish how the tax burden from financing
that budget will be distributed. It may be argued that giving localities power to adjust the rate of
a tax yielding them revenue provides sufficient fiscal autonomy. However, given the choice,
some subnational governments will administer the taxes they levy and some subnational
governments will levy taxes that others will administer. Both options can be feasible. The
principle of complete localization of decision making does imply that the governments should
decide for themselves whether they will administer the taxes that they levy or whether they
should have them administered by some other entity, either another government or a private
organization operating under contract with the taxing government.1 Choice of administration can
be an element of fiscal autonomy.
Second, international experience makes clear that local and regional administration should not be
automatically dismissed as technically impossible or unwarranted. In practical terms, whether
local and regional governments in fact administer the taxes that they levy depends on a mix of
both technical and political considerations (Veehorn and Ahmad, 1997: 109). The significant
substantive issues will be explored in greater depth later, but they may be summarized along the
following lines. Local administration provides full scope for decentralization of revenue policy
(how a tax is administrated is a practical element of policy itself) and its implementation and
exploits familiarity with local business practices and institutions for efficient operation of the
revenue structure. Central administration captures the efficiency advantages of scale and
1
Contracts with private firms and other governments for execution of technical parts of tax administration
are common wherever local governments have responsibility for administration of real property taxes, but
particularly in Canada, the United States, and parts of Africa. These are true service contracts for delivery
of particular services to the government, not the bidding off of right to collect taxes characteristic of the tax
farming approach to privatizing administration (Stella, 1992). Frequently contracted functions include
mapping, listing, and valuation of parcels in real property taxation. In the United States, some states have
experimented with contract auditors for sales and corporate income taxes and both states and localities
frequently contract with private firms on more difficult collection assignments, often paying on the basis of
amount collected. States also regularly use local law enforcement agencies in pursuit of collections from
difficult or dangerous taxpayers. Only a small fraction of all accounts fall into this extreme collection
system – these are accounts virtually given up as hopeless by the tax authorities, so any revenue at all is
better than what the authorities would have otherwise collected.
3
technical expertise and permits a more balanced fight in disputes with powerful taxpayers. The
actual administrative pattern should balance these advantages within existing national
circumstances -- along with the practical issues of comparative administrative capacity across the
tiers of government and with the political factors that shape decisions at all levels of government.
Countries that follow the path of revenue localization and assign taxing authority to tiers of
government below the central level – regional and local – may choose various intergovernmental
administrative assignments for collection of these taxes. However, assignments of tax collecting
responsibility may conveniently be arrayed into three groups: (i) a single, central government
agency that administers all taxes levied by any level of government in the country; (ii) a central
government tax authority plus subnational tax authorities that operate independently of the central
authority and of each other; and (iii) a tax authority operated by the central government and
independent subnational authorities with considerable shared and cooperative operations of some
administrative tasks. Another possibility is to have independent subnational agencies administer
taxes levied by the central government. For example, German lander and Swiss canton tax
authorities administer major taxes for the central government. This arrangement is, however,
rare. Unitary states tend to the first organizational format and federal states often use a mixture of
formats.2 A similar pattern may exist within a region in regard to relationships between the
region and its local governments – there may be a single regional administration, a regional
administration with independent local administrations, or regional and local administrations that
share and cooperate. 3
Not all taxes levied in a country necessarily follow the same administrative format –
administration may be entirely independent for one tax, fully central for another, while there will
be considerable cooperation for others. User charges and prices for goods and services sold by
governments – electricity, housing, water, solid waste collection, etc. -- follow a different pattern:
these systems are virtually always administered by the government providing the service, without
regard for the division of administrative authority that would be used for tax collection.
2. Comparing the Alternatives
Local taxes may be collected by the governments that levy them or they may be collected by the
tax administrators of another government. The range of national practices is quite wide and
provides considerable evidence of the consequences of these administrative choices.
2.1. Centralized Administration.
Centralized tax administration can provide high quality service at low cost for subnational
governments, but may dull transparency and public accountability for tax policy, may delay cash
flow to the subnational governments, and will reduce local autonomy. Evidence from the
2
China provides an example of a unitary state with subnational tax administration operated by local
governments. However, these lower administrators are heavily subordinated to the central State
Administration of Taxes (SAT), thus limiting the extent of actual independence of administrators. Because
taxes are shared upward, this central control is essential here. Regional variations in the degree of
administrative vigor and in interpretation could make the effective central tax rates vary across the local
governments. There are reports that local governments can influence SAT to insure local revenue before
collections accrue to the central government through their control of access to services like water, power,
housing, and schools.
3
In the United States, states levying a property tax have that tax administered by the local governments that
administer the local property taxes.
4
international review of the alternatives for tax administration suggests the following specific
conclusions about centralized administration:
4
(i)
To the extent there are economies of scale in tax administration processes, a
centralized administration improves the chances that these cost savings will be
realized. Smaller independent local administrations may obtain the economies
by contracting with larger entities or by combining operations with other
administrations, but this is less certain to occur than if the administration is
centralized.4
(ii)
A centralized administration provides a single structure for dealing with all
taxpayers throughout the country. With good administrative control in the
central system, the same procedures and processes will be followed everywhere
in the nation. That permits a single information system for tracking taxpayers
and their economic activities and a single taxpayer identification number for all
taxes. A single master file with all relevant data would provide a strong tool for
enforcement and collection through matching across tax types. A single taxpayer
identification number would assist enforcement and a single registration process
into the information system would simplify taxpayer compliance.
(iii)
A single centralized system improves the chances that taxpayers will receive
consistent and unbiased treatment by the tax authority, no matter where in the
country the entity or its taxable activities are located. Uniform treatment without
regard to where the taxpayer may be located or to whom the taxpayer is can
improve the chances that administration will be seen as fair and not playing
favorites and that it will not be slanted to provide “deals” to certain taxpayers.
Because local administration is closer to the people, there is always the concern
that the administration will play favorites and that confidential taxpayer
information will be misused when the people handling the returns know the
taxpayers. With central administration, no matter where a taxpayer may be in a
country, the taxpayer will be subject to exactly the same administrative régime
and none will enjoy a competitive advantage because of administrative
differences. A perception of balanced administration likely contributes to the
probability of compliance with the tax.
(iv)
A central organization can facilitate rotation of personnel, a critical component of
internal control to reduce the potential for corruption. In a smaller administrative
unit, there may simply be too few auditors of adequate skill relative to the
number of complex assignments to maintain regular rotation for those
assignments.
(v)
Central administration reduces the number of points of contact between a
taxpayer and the tax authorities and, because there are certain overhead costs that
will be associated with collecting any tax, may reduce the cost of administration
and compliance for the overall revenue system, central plus subnational. A
single administrative authority eliminates the possibility that the taxpayer will be
confused about what tax organization is responsible for answering questions,
There are few actual tests for economies of scale in tax administration. In one study, Sjoquist and Walker
(1999) find for property tax assessment in Georgia (USA) that a ten percent in the volume of assessments
results in an increase in total costs of approximately three percent.
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receiving filings, enforcement, etc. Taxpayers will not be confused as to what
avenues should be followed to get assistance with tax compliance or as to what
authorities are involved in making appeals or with other contacts. A single audit
assignment can cover central and subnational taxes; there need not be multiple
visits in a single audit cycle. When there are multiple administrative agencies
involved, some payments, correspondence, appointments, etc., inevitably get
misdirected by some taxpayers. None of this will happen if there is only one
authority collecting taxes in the country.
5
(vi)
The large administrative agencies that centralization produces may afford more
qualified personnel, may be able to pay higher salaries (and thus reduce the
attractiveness of corruption), may allow personnel to specialize to a degree not
feasible with smaller administrative units, and may have budgets that permit
more sophisticated information technology.5 It has historically not been
economical for small units of government to invest in costly and specialized
technology and equipment used in tax administration or for them to hire
personnel capable of dealing with more complex compliance issues. Those units
also have greater difficulty justifying specialized training programs when the
staff numbers are small. In small administrative agencies, staff may be required
to handle all routine duties, thus losing both the gains from specialization and the
internal control advantage of separation of duties.
(vii)
A centralized, national tax administration can be better equipped, legally and in
terms of resources, to deal with national and global business entities.
Subnational agencies may be completely overwhelmed in efforts to enforce
compliance from such large businesses. For instance, Tannenwald (2001, 42)
observes that, in the United States, “state and city tax departments are
increasingly ‘outgunned’ in attempting to enforce [the corporate income tax].”
They simply lack the legal and accounting talent to keep up with avoidance or
evasion strategies of large business. This problem certainly must be even more
acute in developing and transition countries.
(viii)
A large, centralized national tax administration will be better able to deal with
taxable activities that cross regional or local jurisdiction boundaries within the
nation.
(ix)
Central administration may permit adoption of more sophisticated structures of
some taxes. For instances, it is easier for a local government to administer an
income tax based on “earned income” or payrolls than a broad tax on income
from any source on the Haig – Simons concept; the former requires enforcement
against employers in the jurisdiction, a far easier task than the broader reporting
from entities outside the jurisdiction that the latter would almost certainly
require.6
The idea that higher pay will lead to better performance is generally accepted, but seldom tested. In an
analysis in one American state (Connecticut), Bates and Santerre (1993) find no evidence linking higher
pay to better performance in property tax collection. However, their performance measure – the collection
rate – was an extremely narrow performance concept, so the results do little to change the basic
performance presumption.
6
The payroll version typically means that jurisdictions in which people work will receive the tax revenue.
This may not be the jurisdiction in which they live and from which they demand local public services.
6
(x)
Central administration may facilitate transfers of revenues to mitigate horizontal
fiscal disparity across subnational units of government. Revenue from taxes
administered by subnational governments almost always stays with the
government collecting the revenue, leaving great disparity between regions with
high endowment of the tax base, e. g., natural resources, heavy industry, etc., and
those lacking such an endowment.
2.2. Independent Subnational Administration.
An important standard of modern public finance is the principle of subsidiarity, the idea that
governmental actions should be taken at the lowest level of government, the level closest to the
people, at which the desired objectives can be achieved. The principle, when applied to tax
administration, suggests that independent regional and local tax administration ought not be
dismissed, but should be considered as another alternative in the efficient, effective, and
responsive implementation of overall national tax policy. Casanegra de Jantscher (1990, 179)
maintains that “tax administration is tax policy” in developing countries. The same certainly
holds true in transition nations and, given variations in enforcement terms and conditions across a
country, also applies to an important degree for tax policy in any nation. Therefore, if it is
reasonable for regional and local governments to develop tax policy as an element of a program
for localization of government financing, then it is similarly reasonable to consider the degree to
which independent regional and local administration may be economically and technically
feasible. It certainly would be politically feasible and possibly politically desirable in a program
of increased fiscal responsiveness. This is particularly critical because the taxpayer’s contact
with the tax law – the representation of what tax policy is – is through its administrative
apparatus. Hence, as far as the taxpayer is concerned, the representation of tax policy will be the
tax administrators.
Regional and local governments, even within a single country, vary widely in terms of size,
professionalism, and economic development. This makes precise conclusions about independent
tax administration difficult. However, general experience with independent regional and local tax
administration suggests the following:
(i)
Familiarity with local conditions and easy adaptability to those local conditions
can facilitate registration of taxpayers, collection, and enforcement of many
taxes. Indeed, when local governments have designed their own tax base and
structures, local administration can be designed specifically for the tax in that
application and policy and administration can be fully merged. Administration
need not be a central one stretched to apply to the local structural peculiarities,
administrative decisions can be made without dragging them through a
centralized bureaucracy and, should enforcement be directed toward large
taxpayers as an administrative strategy (Baer et al, 2002), the selection will be
based on large taxpayers within the local or regional tax system, not those large
in national terms. Decisions get made locally, not in some distant central
headquarters.
(ii)
Local administration can apply taxes on economic activities that fall below the
threshold of central government interest because local administrators have
Broader versions based on individual taxpayer reporting are more likely to be residence based and, hence,
to allocate collections to the jurisdiction in which the person resides.
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familiarity with the local business environment from information generated
through local licensing and regulatory processes and can generate revenue by
bringing small enterprises into the tax system at relatively low cost. Bringing
them into the subnational tax system may also assist central government revenue
mobilization if there is information exchange between central and subnational
administrations.
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(iii)
When administration of local taxes is separate, it is much easier for taxpayers to
see which government is levying what taxes -- and to hold the appropriate
governments accountable. Transparency can be lost when a central authority
administers the tax levied by a lower level of government. Taxpayers receiving a
consolidated regional / local property tax bill or preparing a consolidated regional
/ local income tax return often cannot easily discern what government is levying
which portion of the total tax bill. That reduces the degree to which fiscal
autonomy improves accountability for budget choices that have been made.
Independent administration usually exposes responsibility for the tax being
levied.
(iv)
Independent regional and local tax authorities can act as “insulated chambers of
experimentation” for tax administration. They can innovate new approaches and
techniques, exploiting the nimbleness that often characterizes smaller
organizations. For example, state revenue departments in the United States have
been leaders in the application of new information technology, bar-coding, and
imaging to tax administration, the State Revenue Department of Western
Australia markets its revenue collection information system widely, and Gujarat
state in India has developed a computerized system for checking commercial
vehicles to enforce the road tax at interstate check posts that reduces clearance
time from thirty to two minutes. Some subnational governments have greater
flexibility and control over resources than others, some have more creative
administrators than others, and some have better environments for
experimentation than others. That allows something like natural experiments in
tax administration, a result that cannot easily happen within the confines of a
single, centralized administration. Furthermore, the impact of confusion and
mistakes if the experiment fails is localized and limited.
(v)
Independent administration can provide the taxing government quicker and more
certain control over its revenue. As Veehorn and Ahmad recognize, central
administration means that “local governments may perceive that they have very
little control over receipts.” (1997, 113) With independent administration, the
government does not have to await distribution from the central administration
because it has control over funds as soon as the taxpayer makes payment.7
Slow and inaccurate payment has been a common complaint among localities in the United States whose
sales or income tax is administered by the state government. Before the advent of electronic funds transfer,
larger cities in the state of Texas would regularly fly to the state capitol to receive payment of local sales
tax collections so that the city could have faster use of the funds for short term investment or payment of
city obligations, rather than wait for the payment to be mailed. When the American states experience
budget problems, one common approach is for them to delay scheduled payments (transfers or centrallycollected local taxes) to their local governments. However, these complaints pale against the two year lags
in shared personal income tax receipts received by localities in Hungary (Bird et al., 1995, 86). Delays are
8
Unfortunately, the central administration would typically not have quickness as
an objective in dealing with another government’s revenue. Also, independent
local administration simplifies revenue accounting: there is no dispute about the
proper distribution of collections among taxing governments, a frequent point of
contention when one government collects tax levied by another government.
(vi)
Subnational governments like the employment power that independent
administration provides. Unfortunately, in some countries, labor intensity in tax
collection and high collection cost is seen as a virtue. This is what Fjeldstad
observed about local tax administration in Tanzania: “for certain small taxes and
charges the collection costs are the reason for the levy. In other words, the
purpose is to create employment or at least an income-earning opportunity for
some one who might otherwise be unemployed.” (2001, 4) The influence is real,
although not so blatant, in other countries.
(vii)
Local governments may not be satisfied with the central standard of tax
enforcement and local administration allows them to pursue a different
enforcement policy. As Alm (1999) has observed, the output of revenue
administration includes both government revenue and taxpayer equity and
subnational units may balance these two outputs differently from the central
administration. In other words, local governments may have different views
about the appropriate distribution of uncollected taxes; independent local
administration allows enforcement policy to reflect these differences.
(viii)
Independent administration would insure the regional or local government that
their revenue interests were rigorously represented in disputes about the
distribution of tax revenues from enterprises or individuals that might be taxable
in multiple jurisdictions. The question of what jurisdiction is entitled to tax
certain tax bases – the profit from business enterprise conducted in several
jurisdictions or income for individuals with work assignments in several areas,
for instance – is a thorny one if an effort is made to apportion the total in a
manner that generally reflects portions of activity within the various taxing
jurisdictions.8 Businesses and individuals tend to make legal interpretations that
reduce their tax liability and some also evade tax owed. As a result, subnational
governments may receive less revenue than they believe to be owed them, even
though the entity has paid all tax owed the central government. A central tax
authority that administers both central and piggybacked subnational taxes is
almost certainly going to be less concerned with getting the subnational tax
apportionments right than would be independent subnational authorities.
Furthermore, the subnational jurisdictions themselves may differ as to the
appropriate distribution of the tax base. A single central administrative authority
is not well-equipped to settle such disputes over regional interests. The case of
each taxing jurisdiction could best be made by independent administrations, not
by functionaries of the central administration.
blamed on sorting returns when taxpayer residence differs from location of workplace or tax office. Such
delays would work against any rate increases: there would be a long lag between when the taxpayer feels
the higher tax and any public service benefits from the increase.
8
A simple rule, like crediting all profit to the location of the business’s home office, is open to so much
manipulation that complication is necessary for equity and to reduce economic distortion. Allowing the
taxpayer to make the division will assure an allocation favoring the jurisdiction with lowest tax rates.
9
(ix)
Independent administration by the lower government that levies the tax provides
assurance to the taxing government that full and appropriate diligence will be
given the collection and enforcement of its taxes.9 When higher governments
(and the employees of these governments) administer those taxes, there is the
danger that administrators will give collection and enforcement of lower tier
taxes less attention and lower priority than taxes levied by the higher tier.
Allowing the collecting government to retain a portion of the lower tier tax it
administers (paying a collection fee, in other words) may reduce the disincentive
somewhat; such collection fees are, for instance, often provided when state
governments in the United States collect local government sales taxes. However,
if the fee is substantial, the reduced revenue to the local units may dampen the
enthusiasm with which lower units pursue fiscal autonomy through enactment of
their own taxes.
(x)
Duplicate enforcement may provide a check against omissions when central and
subnational administrations exchange information and may make corruption
more difficult because two sets of enforcement officials must be paid off. As
Radian (1980, 89) observes, “in countries where both central and local authorities
collect taxes, there is higher extractive capability than in nations that rely solely
on central administration.”
(xi)
Burgess and Stern (1993, 799) postulate that “[d]ifferences in the tradition of
compliance probably explain as much of the worldwide pattern of taxation as do
under-resourced or poorly organized tax administrations.” Many countries in the
developing and transition group have little or no tradition of paying taxes. Local
administration has a better chance of bringing the population into the system than
would administration imposed on them from the distant national capital.
Administration by local bodies, not by representatives of the central government,
may help create a compliance tradition.
(xii)
There is a competitive aspect to the case for independent administration. The
argument made by McLure and Martinez (2000) for decentralization also applies
to tax administration: “Just as competition in the marketplace protects
consumers from the rapaciousness of business, so tax competition protects
citizens from the rapaciousness of politicians and bureaucrats.” Tax authorities
are popularly viewed as among the most rapacious of civil servants.
Economies of scale in tax administration appear to present an important barrier to independent
administration. But that may not be controlling. Even if size of jurisdiction is relevant to
achieving effective administration, many regions and municipalities have populations and
economies larger than those of many independent nations; if the nations can successfully
administer their own taxes, then surely economic and technical factors ought not preclude
9
It has been suggested that different sharing rates may create similar problems. In regard to India,
Hemming, Mates, and Porter (1997, 534) observe: “The fact that the center retains different percentages of
different taxes – with the rest being passed on to the states – may provide an incentive to concentrate the
collection effort and resources of the central tax administration on those taxes … it retains in full or in
higher percentage.”
10
independent administration of taxes levied by those large regions and municipalities.10
Furthermore, smaller regions or municipalities can band together in administrative compacts for
provision of any administrative services for which size might matter.
2.3. Decentralization Dilemmas
The decision to decentralize administration of local taxes frequently involves, as Dillinger (1991,
29) describes, “a tradeoff between indifference and incompetence.” When the central
government receives no revenue from administration of a tax, that tax is likely to receive less
attention than is given taxes yielding revenue for the central government. But the local
government may have lower capacity to administer its taxes than does the central government, in
terms of qualified personnel, technology, and ability to stand up to large businesses. Hence the
tradeoff: the central government is capable but less interested in local collections and the local
government is keenly interested by less capable.
That is the basic dilemma in providing subnational governments new authority for their own tax
administration: regional or local governments are unlikely to have the full capacity to administer
their own taxes if they have never actually done it before and central governments are reluctant to
permit self-administration without demonstrated administrative capacity. Therefore, when
considering whether subnational governments would be capable of self-administration, the
question should be the extent to which they could become capable of the tasks, not whether they
are currently prepared to do the work. It certainly means that training and technical assistance
should accompany any major decentralization of administrative authority. In sum, incompetence
can be remedied, but indifference is permanent.
A basic problem in providing subnational governments with greater fiscal autonomy in
developing and transition nations is that both the tax bases and taxing authority granted them are
often inherently weak – the bases are narrow and have modest yield prospects, the taxes have
modest buoyancy, the taxes are difficult to collect, and the localities frequently have constrained
enforcement powers. Modest bases are a problem when the taxes continue to be centrally
administered and even more of a problem when the small bases are to be locally administered. In
these instances, local authorities do not find it reasonable to devote considerable resources to the
enforcement of these taxes. Passively accepting whatever revenue happens to come in is usually
the most reasonable approach. Granting tax authority for an array of minor taxes not only
obscures the actual tax burden, thus violating the transparency requirement, it also makes low
quality administration more likely. It is a mistake to decentralize by granting subnational
governments the authority to administer a great list of minor taxes. Permitting a single
meaningful revenue source is much more valuable than permitting a long list of minor sources.
3. An Overview of Administrative Systems
In practice, taxes assigned subnational governments may be collected centrally, independently by
the revenue recipient, or through cooperative administrative arrangements. There are numerous
examples of most administrative arrangements. Several of these will be described in the sections
that follow.
3.1. Central Administration.
10
The base of many national taxes frequently is concentrated in a small number of urban areas. In those
instances, the practical difference between national administration and administration of the tax by those
local areas would not be great.
11
A single tax administration administers all taxes in many countries, including taxes levied by both
national and local governments. Sometimes only the central government has taxing authority, in
which case single administration is the only reasonable option – the central government tax policy
should be administered consistently and uniformly throughout the country. The uniformity
argument is also strong when taxes have been adopted centrally for dedicated and shared
distribution to regional or local government. It is also convenient when subnational governments
are permitted to levy supplemental (or piggybacked) rates on a national base.11
When a tax is centrally administered, staff of the administrative unit is employed by the central
government. There may be administrative decentralization (regional authorities along with the
central authority), but all decentralized units are part of a single central administration. Other
elements of central administration typically include (i) returns that encompass both the central tax
and any subnational taxes, (ii) a unified registration process for taxpayers, (iii) taxpayer
identification numbers that serve for all levels of government, (iv) compatible and combined
revenue and taxpayer accounting information systems, and (v) unified delinquency control, audit
strategy, and audit programs.12 Ideally, the national system will allow broader options for
geographic rotation of audit and enforcement personnel, an important element of internal control,
but that remains difficult in practice.
With centralized administration, the central administration – either centrally or through dependent
regional branches – collects taxes levied by the central government, the revenue from which may
finance central government services, may be distributed to regional or local governments through
conditional or unconditional grant programs, or may be shared by formula with those lower
governments and also collects any taxes that might be levied by subnational governments.13 The
11
Unfortunately, the Government Finance Statistics of the International Monetary Fund do not distinguish
between subnational taxes – taxes over which the subnational government exercises control at the margin –
and taxes controlled by the central government that have been allocated to, i. e., shared with, subnational
budgets. They are different: with shared taxes, the margin for tax policy remains centralized and an
important factor for localization, accountability, and prudence is gone. As Ebel and Yilmaz write”
“Accountability at the margin is an important characteristic of a revenue system that fosters prudence in
debt and expenditure management. It is impossible for a subnational government not to have control over
revenue margins and still be fully accountable.” (2002, 11) Proper categorizing for margin of control is
important. For instance, if revenues assigned local government in Latvia are counted as own source, the
own source share of total revenue for 1999 equals 66.2 percent, indicating considerable local fiscal
autonomy; if only those taxes controllable at the margin by local government are counted, the share falls to
zero because the central government establishes rate and base for the “local” taxes. OECD (2000, 29)
Self-administration adds another element to the policy margin and that is not covered at all in the IMF
statistics.
12
The functions are somewhat different for property taxes. Here, the emphasis is on maintaining property
records and developing a system of mass valuation of property parcels; the focus is not on encouraging
voluntary compliance and, because the parcels are immobile, collection can proceed at a slower pace. The
process is particularly critical in countries in transition from plan to market; Lithuania presents one
example of this process (Sabaliauskas and Aleksiene, 2002).
13
Among these centrally administered transfer arrangements is the tax sharing of the type practiced in
many countries of the former Soviet Union and in Germany. This sharing involves a tax adopted by the
central government and shared on a derivation basis, with shares determined by central legislation. The
subcentral governments receive revenue form the shared tax according to the amount of taxable activity
that has occurred within their jurisdictions. These arrangements do not provide the fiscal autonomy of true
local taxation, because the structure of the taxes, their rates, their administration, and the sharing rate are
controlled by the central government. From an economic standpoint, they are not local taxes at all, but
rather are a special grant or transfer program. The most complete tax sharing programs among
12
National Tax Board / regional Tax Authorities structure in Sweden offers an example of
decentralization of organization within a central national system. The ten regional authorities
(one for each county) are responsible for tax collection functions. Each Tax Authority has a
County Tax Director and a governing council, but they are under the guidance of the National
Tax Board. Within the National Tax Board is the Enforcement Service (KFM), itself organized
with ten regional authorities (not coterminous with Tax Authority regions), assigned
responsibility to confirm and collect debts. The KFM collects unpaid taxes for the Tax Authority,
but its authority extends more broadly to other public claims (television licenses, parking fines,
etc., owed to central and local authorities) and to private claims (private judgments from general
and administrative courts). The National Tax Board administers both organizations, issues
directives on their implementation of the laws, and works to maintain uniformity of
administration across the country. In the Swedish example, two regionally-organized authorities
administer tax collection, but both are subordinated to a single National Tax Board. Most central
government tax systems, of course, do not have an entity like the KFM and some nations are
compact enough that they do not require regional authorities.
When there is a single, central administration, it would also collect any taxes levied by regional or
local governments. Some countries do feature central administration of assigned regional or local
taxes. The Russian Federation offers one example: the central Ministry of Taxation is
responsible for collection of all taxes throughout the country, including those levied by legislative
action of regional or local government (as well as shared taxes adopted by the Federation Duma
for distribution to subnational governments); there are no tax administration agencies other than
the central Ministry of Taxation.14 Both subjects of the Federation and local units of selfgovernment may levy taxes from an assigned list. Some of these taxes are piggybacked
surcharges to a central tax (the enterprise profits tax has been such a tax), some may be levied by
the Federation Duma for support of subnational budgets (the individual income tax has been such
a tax), and some are levied by action of the region (the retail sales tax) or by localities, but the
central Ministry administers all the taxes.15
In the early years of transition, there were continuing concerns in Russia and other countries of
the former Soviet Union about dual subordination in the central tax administration: while the tax
inspectors were officially and organizationally part of the central government apparatus (the tax
inspectorate within a ministry of finance or an independent ministry of taxation), the field staff
had considerable loyalty to local authorities because those authorities provided them with office
space, heat, supplies, and other amenities, if not salaries or salary supplements and it was
common for regional authorities to have the right to approve appointments of regional
administrators of the central tax authority. This created the great potential for administrative
problems and abuses. In the transition period, not all tax payments were collected (and of those
collected, not all were collected in live cash, as opposed to being collected in kind) and divided
loyalties and closeness to the regional and local authorities meant that subnational budgets got
industrialized democracies is in Norway; local governments receive an established percentage of tax
collected within their jurisdictions and hence receive a sizable share of all tax collected in the nation, but
they have no tax autonomy because base, rate, and administration choices are all made centrally.
14
Except for the federal Tax Police, a separate entity that was responsible for preventing, exposing, and
suppressing tax crimes and violations of the tax law. The Tax Police also had local offices, but was fully
distinct from the Ministry of Taxation. In the winter of 2003, the Tax Police were transferred to the
Ministry of the Interior and how it will function as a department in this ministry is not clear.
15
Centrally-administered subnational general sales taxes are also levied in some other transition countries
as well, for instance, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, although they often will apply to gross turnover in the year
and lack the mechanisms to accommodate adding tax to sales price that are common to the subnational
retail sales taxes in the United States and Canada.
13
favorable treatment in terms of what money could be extracted from taxpayers. Regional and
local governments got cash; the central government got payment in kind and that payment could
be valued at whatever amount the collection authority chose. While this problem from the early
period of transition is extreme, it does illustrate a more general issue whenever administration of
one government works for another: will effort be vigorous when the proceeds of that effort will
go to another government? That is why clear performance expectations and standards are
particularly necessary when shared administration is employed.
There are other examples of higher administration of lower level taxes, sometimes for all taxes
and sometimes for only certain taxes. One frequent arrangement is the local or regional tax
supplement that accompanies (piggybacks) a higher level government’s tax, using higher level
administration for collection and enforcement. Some examples of this arrangement include the
following:
16
(i)
Localities in Nordic countries supplement the central tax with a piggybacked
personal income tax administered by the central government. For example, the
Swedish National Tax Board previously discussed administers local taxes based
on the central personal income tax base. The rates are proportional but vary
between municipalities, with the lowest rates in well-to-do suburbs of large cities
and highest rates in the rural north and in municipalities suffering industrial
decline. Similar arrangements for income taxes apply in Denmark, Finland, and
Iceland.
(ii)
Some local governments in the United States levy supplements to state individual
income taxes. The state tax department administers the local taxes in the same
collection flow as applies for its own tax. The same administrative structure –
withholding, return processing, revenue accounting, delinquency control, audit,
enforcement – applies to both state and local taxes. The local tax is commonly
satisfied through a single line on the larger state tax return. These are broad base
taxes, not the taxes limited to earned income that localities in some states
(notably Pennsylvania and Kentucky) collect on their own. State administration
makes it feasible to apply the tax to a broader measure of taxable income but
localities complain about slow distribution of revenue collections and about
distribution of revenues to the proper locality. As far as state administrators are
concerned, keeping collections allocated to the proper locality adds a
troublesome step to their revenue accounting and enforcement programs.
(iii)
Some local governments in the United States levy retail sales taxes that are
supplements to the state tax. Indeed, local sales taxes are the second largest
source of tax revenue to local governments – a distant second to property taxes in
importance.16 Although some localities do administer their own sales taxes, more
often the local taxes are a piggybacked supplement to the state tax, with state
administration provided at low or no cost to the locality. The state-administered
taxes are collected in transparent tandem with the state sales tax – standard
exemptions, deductions, and credits; common bracket schedules for adding tax to
listed prices; standard due dates for remittance by vendors; harmonized returns;
It should be noted that in large American cities, a local income or sales tax often yields considerably
more revenue than does the property tax. That is the case, for instance, for New York City and for
Washington, D. C., where their income taxes yield more than does their property tax. In Denver, the city
sales tax yields more than half of all city tax revenue.
14
etc. Multi-branch merchants must segregate sales and collections according to
taxing jurisdiction so that revenues may be distributed to the proper jurisdiction.
The merchant’s return will thus have as many lines as there are jurisdictions in
which it makes taxable sales. However, the single state return that central
administration permits is simpler for compliance than separate returns and
distinct filings for many independent taxing administrations. The state
authorities must undertake revenue accounting to separate payments between
state and local amounts and among the several taxing localities and distribute
collections on a timely basis.
(iv)
Local governments in Switzerland levy supplements to canton individual income
taxes. Each of the twenty-six Swiss cantons has its own tax system and local
governments are entitled to levy taxes to the extent authorized by the canton. The
communal tax is levied as a percentage or multiple of the basic canton tax rate.
A federal law requires cantons to harmonize their income tax concept and
deductions with the federal base, but they may set the amount of deductions and
their rate schedules. Each of the cantons has a separate administrative body for
collection of its taxes. The communal tax is piggybacked on the canton tax and
federal tax is reported on the canton return. Thus, the canton is responsible for
assessing and collecting federal, canton, and communal income tax –
centralization down from the canton but decentralized administration up to the
federal level. In contrast to the case in many nations, subnational – canton and
municipal – Swiss governments receive the bulk of income tax collections, not
the federal government. And, again in contrast to most international experience,
the income tax is a relatively modest revenue source for the federal level. But
because the tax is collected across all cantons, it is important that the base and
deductions be standardized in order that a uniform effective federal rate can be
imposed on taxpayers without regard to their location.
The greatest array of regional taxes that are centrally administered occurs in Canada, where the
national Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) collects some provincial and territorial
sales, corporate income, and personal income taxes, but not for all of the subnational
governments and not in the same way for all taxes. The accompanying Appendix One gives
greater detail as to how these relationships operate and on the terms and conditions of their
operation.
Local property taxes in many countries give local governments some choice of tax rate, but all
parts of administration are performed by the national revenue agency. Sometimes, however, the
localities do not choose the rate, but receive the proceeds of the centrally adopted and
administered tax (Lithuanian is one example); these latter arrangements are properly considered
origin-based transfers from a central tax, not local taxes.
Indonesia offers an example of near-total central control of property tax policy and
administration. A flat tax rate of 0.5 percent applies to the assessed capital value of land and
improvements throughout the country. Revenue is divided according to nationally legislated
shares: 64.2 percent to local governments, 16.2 percent to provincial governments, 10 percent to
the central government, and 9 percent for administrative costs (also to the central government).
Property assessment operates through a mass valuation system that assesses land by a “similar
land value zone” approach (land is divided into zones with an average sales price per square
meter determined by the central tax ministry) and structures by the replacement cost approach.
Revaluations are done every three years except in rapidly developing areas where revaluations are
15
each year. The system assigns tax liability to either the owner or the beneficiary of each parcel to
avoid problems from unclear property titles. A payment point system works through designated
banks which receive pre-printed receipts for expected payments. The receipts remaining after the
due date -- taxpayers have six months to pay -- constitute the delinquency list for enforcement.
Regional governments assist in collection and with maintaining the fiscal cadastre (even though
that is officially the responsibility of the central government). A comprehensive information
management system encompasses maintenance of parcel data, valuation, billing, collection, and
enforcement. In this system, local governments do not control the property tax at the margin and
the prospect for the tax as a foundation for local revenue to support decentralization remains
unused. Although this property tax is properly categorized as a shared central tax, not a
subnational tax, its revenue would constitute 21.9 percent of non-grant revenue for provincial
government and 50.2 percent for local government in 1999 – 2000 (Kelly 2003, 12). With local
autonomy, at least permitting local rate setting, the tax could become an even more important
contributor to subnational government finance and the subnational units could play a greater role
in administration of the tax.
When the flexibility is permitted, local governments themselves can arrange for centralized
administration. One particularly successful illustration is the Central Collection Agency (CCA), a
part of the Cleveland (Ohio, USA) Department of Finance, that administers the individual income
taxes (applied to wages, salaries, and other employee compensation, rental income, and
unincorporated business profits) levied independently by forty-three Ohio municipalities in the
northern part of that state.17 CCA performs all functions of a standard tax administration agency:
it aggressively maintains the taxpayer list, mails returns to taxpayers, provides taxpayer assistance
during filing season, processes all payments (both estimated and reconciliations from individual
taxpayers and withholding payments from employers), bills any tax due and assesses penalties
and interest, mails delinquency notices, conducts audits of taxpayers, and distributes collections
each month by electronic funds transfer to contracting municipalities.18 CCA contracts limit the
charge for its services to five percent of collections, but actual charges are based on CCA
expenses (the total is allocated among municipalities by a formula based on revenue share and
number of transactions) and are much lower than the limit. In the CCA area, the municipalities
can chose to levy the tax, can choose the rate that they levy, and can choose whether to administer
the tax themselves or to contract with CCA for the service. This range of choices gives the
municipalities great fiscal autonomy and, because the municipalities can opt in or out, requires
that CCA pay great attention to the quality and cost of the service that it provides.
The separation between the lower and higher level taxes is not always clear to the taxpayer; in
some American states, for instance, the local tax appears as a single line on the state tax return
and is fully subsumed in the state collection and enforcement process. In Canada, there is a
single return for provincial and federal income taxes, although a separate calculation of some
detail is required for each. And in American states in which local sales taxes are collected, the
local and state taxes are collected together, without differentiation, on taxable transactions. These
arrangements make the taxes more convenient, but blur political responsibility for the taxes being
17
There are other similar income tax administration groups operating in the state. For example, the
Regional Income Tax Agency serves even more localities than CCA.
18
An individual taxpayer may work or earn profit in more than one municipality served by CCA. Such a
taxpayer would file one return with CCA that distributes taxable income across each municipality and pay
tax accordingly, but make only a single payment to CCA. Similarly, an individual may reside in one
municipality and be employed in another – and owe income tax to each. That would also be handled in the
single return to CCA if both municipalities have contracts with CCA. Thus, the CCA arrangement
provides a degree of convenience for the taxpayer.
16
levied and collected. Also, the central administering unit almost always restricts the structure of
any tax for which it offers administration (base definition and rate structure that may be applied),
thereby limiting tax policy options available to the local government, as well as defines
administrative policy (audit plans, collection policies, etc.) for the tax. These are policy choices
effectively taken from the locality when its taxes are centrally administered.
3.2. Independent Local Administration.
Independent subnational authority both to enact tax legislation (choose taxes, define bases, set
rates, etc.) and to administer the taxes that have been enacted affords these subnational units a
higher level of fiscal autonomy because the regional or local government controls both the design
of the tax structure and how that structure will be applied. In many instances, these taxes
administered independently for subnational authorities are not levied by the national government,
so independent administration adds diversity to the overall revenue scheme of the country, in
addition to providing fiscal autonomy.
Subnational governments need administrative capacity that is adequate to equitable and efficient
collection of taxes for which they have assumed collections responsibility. Because
administration itself is an element of revenue autonomy, the fact that centralized administration
might be less costly for some taxes, might improve some facets of distributional equity, or might
generate some additional revenue is not decisive evidence for dictating central administration.
Leaving choice of administration to responsible subnational authorities is an element of autonomy
and, as seen in the Canadian case, can lead to central administration of regional taxes, or, in the
case of the United States, to regional administration of local taxes, as well as to independent
subnational administration; the result depends on the attractiveness (economic and political) of
the options presented. Some taxes are less technically suitable for subnational administration
than others and not all administrative functions for those that might be administered at lower tiers
are efficiently performed by smaller governments. But where lower tier governments can
otherwise become technically competent, subnational administration can be considered.
Particular attention should be devoted to the major broad-base taxes administered independently
by subnational governments, especially individual income taxes and real property taxes.19 There
is even wider international experience with subnational administration of selective excises, fees,
licenses, etc., but these sources typically have limited revenue potential and subnational
governments cannot rationally afford to devote substantial resources to their administration.
Therefore, disappointing experience with minor sources ought not be taken to mean that
independent administration is impossible, because it may mean that the governments do not see
fit to waste their administrative resources on a tax with modest potential. Corporate income
taxes are also levied by regional and local governments, but there are difficult logical and
technical problems in regard to allocation of corporate income among taxing jurisdictions,
possibly unjustifiable compliance costs imposed on businesses by these taxes, and subnational
19
General sales taxes also make a significant contribution to regional government finances in the United
States, Canada, India (Purohit, 2001), and the Russian Federation. Also, cities in Nepal, India, and other
countries in Asia and Africa have relied on the octroi, an easy, buoyant, and productive source of revenue.
Jenkins and colleagues (2000, 19-20) describe operation of the tax in Nepal: “It was levied technically by
using street barriers lowered and raised by tax inspectors. Together with the fact that this money was
levied on out-of-town people and not on local constituents, the whole procedure reminded one of medieval
robber-barons descending from their castles to collect “fees” from traveling merchants, than of a tax fit for
a modern government.”
17
governments are forever torn between rigorous enforcement to protect the tax base and giving
favorable treatment to local businesses to encourage economic development.20
Much of the experience with independent subnational administration, particularly of nonproperty
taxes, comes from nations organized as federations because they are more likely to offer some
degree of fiscal autonomy, including administrative autonomy, to lower tier governments.
3.2.1.
United States
Government finances in the United States are generally driven by the principle that the
government wishing to deliver government services should be prepared to raise the necessary
revenues and generally to administer the revenue system that has been selected to finance those
services.21 With some few exceptions, including those piggybacked arrangements previously
noted and some instances of intergovernmental cooperation to be discussed in the next section,
tax authorities are independent operations. The specific characteristics are outlined in the
accompanying Appendix Two. In general, both large and small subnational governments in the
United States manage independent tax collection duties, not perfectly and sometimes with quite
notorious errors and instances of blatant corruption, but well enough that reports of these
problems are newsworthy because of their rarity.
.
3.2.2. Canada
The tradition in Canada has been independent administration of major provincial and local taxes,
with the exception of income taxes as noted previously (and even with income taxes, some
provinces administer their own taxes: Quebec for individual and corporate and Ontario and
Alberta for corporate). The adoption of the federation Goods and Services Tax, a value added
tax, brought a change in the scheme. As the accompanying appendix explains in detail, the
provincial sales tax regimes now divide into four groups: (i) five provinces levying and
administering their own sales taxes independent of the federation tax and of each other; (ii) one
province (Quebec) levying its own sales tax and administering both that tax and the federation
20
Forty-five states in the United States levy corporate income taxes that are similar to the comparable
federal levy, but state and federal administrations are separate. Federal law provides ground rules that
define when a state may tax income of a multi-state business (nexus) and for division of business income
among states in which the business operates. However, the apportionment standards have become quite
flexible through court rulings and a number of different formulae are used by the states. The system
rejects any attempt at state-by-state accounting of profits earned by the corporation. Some Canadian
provinces also administer such taxes, but most are in the scheme administered by CCRA. In contrast to the
practice in the United States, Canada has a single, agreed apportionment formula for dividing corporate
income among the provinces. Other subnational governments generally do not attempt to administer broad
corporate profits taxes, leaving such administration to the central level. The enterprise profits taxes that
have been levied by subjects of the Russian Federation but are administered by the national Ministry of
Taxation offer one such example. In 2003 Russian Federation lawmakers developed a restructuring
program that would end the regional sales taxes. Because these taxes were not separated quoted, there has
been public concern that firms would not adjust their prices downward when the tax ends, but will simply
maintain prices and receive higher profits. This experience may provide an argument for the American
system of separate quotation, although economically it should make no difference.
21
While the technology and sophistication used by the American state and local governments likely far
exceeds that available in developing and transition countries, it should be recalled that these taxes were
initially administered with paper returns, file cards, pencils, and adding machines. In particular, the sales
tax was a product of the Great Depression of the 1930s – when real property tax revenues failed the states,
the retail sales tax proved capable of generating revenue to continue state services and collection definitely
used minimal technology.
18
tax; (iii) three provinces levying a sales tax that is fully harmonized with the federation tax and
administered by Canada Customs and Revenue Agency; and (iv) one province and all the
territories levying no sales tax. The details of the arrangements appear in the previously cited
appendix. But the Canadian experience clearly demonstrates the compatibility of a central value
added tax and regional retail sales taxes, with a wide range of administration feasible. As in the
United States, the quality of provincial sales tax administration is regarded as high.
3.2.3.
Australia
Australia provides another system of independent administration within a federation. Taxes are
levied and collected at three levels of government, although a much greater share of subnational
expenditure is financed by central grants, rather than taxes levied by these lower governments,
than is the case in the United States and Canada. The states must rely on substantial federal
grants because they are effectively blocked by interpretation of the national constitution or by
grant stipulations from levying any general consumption or broad-based income taxes.
The Australian Tax Office administers the broad-based goods and service (value added) tax,
income taxes assessed on companies, trusts, and individuals, and a variety of lesser indirect taxes
– in other words, all the major taxes levied in the country. Independent revenue departments in
each state and territory administer taxes levied by these governments, the most significant being
employer payroll taxes, land taxes, and stamp duties. Municipalities levy and collect real estate
taxes (rates) and collect them in one to four installment payments on the basis of rate notices
distributed to taxpayers. State government valuation offices or contract valuers, not offices of the
municipalities themselves, establish the taxable value for these municipal levies. The states
establish the standards that must be used for these valuations. There is no provision for exchange
of information across the levels of government.
3.2.4.
Nigeria
Nigeria is another federation that provides a degree of subnational tax administration. However,
the results are less satisfactory than in the countries discussed before. A more detailed discussion
of the arrangements in Nigeria, including the extent to which there are efforts to coordinate the
work of independent administrations, appears in the accompanying Appendix Three. The
experience to date reminds of the need to insure administrative capacity or a means of obtaining it
before allowing administrative autonomy.
3.2.5.
Brazil
Brazil is another geographically large federation in which central government, states, and
municipalities design, implement, and collect their own taxes. Although the subnational
governments have certain other taxing authority, the most interesting system of taxes in the
country involves taxes on goods and services.22 The taxes are both broad and selective.
Both central and state governments levy broad-based value-added type taxes. The federal VAT,
the IPI (Imposto sobre Produtos Insustrializados), is a tax on manufacturing levied on all
transactions of taxable industrial products on a base defined as sales less purchases of inputs. The
tax is administered by the federal revenue service. The tax is limited to delivery of industrial
products at the producer level, defined to include importers of foreign products. The IPI paid on
22
Among the other taxes are state taxes on property and automobiles, municipal taxes on urban property
and on real estate transactions, and federal taxes on income, excises, and rural land.
19
raw materials, intermediate goods, and packing materials is credited against tax paid on final
goods sold. Agricultural and mineral products are excluded, as are the retail and wholesale trade.
The IPI applies at several different rates with lower rates on necessities, higher rates on luxuries
and sumptuary goods, and higher rates on more intensely processed commodities. The
differentiation is intended to be driven by the eventual final product, but many products may
become a part of a luxury or a necessity (leather may become either shoes or a designer purse, for
instance), so the relationship at the industrial product level is far from perfect. Around 40 percent
of IPI revenue comes from three product groups: automobiles, tobacco products, and beverages.
And three-quarters of all collections come from three states: Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and
Sao Paolo.
The states’ VAT, the ICMS (Imposto Sobre Operacoes Relativas a Circulacao de Mercadorias e
Servicos), applies at all stages of the production – distribution chain, generally to goods but not to
services (except interstate and intercity transportation and communication services) and is the
most productive revenue source in Brazil. State tax authorities collect the tax, but the federal
constitution requires states to transfer 25 percent of their ICMS proceeds to their municipalities,
partly on the basis of origin of collections and partly according to formulas enacted by each state
legislature. The taxes operate as value added taxes, but provide no credit for capital goods. The
individual states set the rate on intrastate trade within federally-established floor and ceiling;
there are multiple rates by type of product (the standard rate is 17 or 18 percent, depending on the
state; luxuries may be taxed at a higher rate and some staple food products may be taxed at a
lower rate). However, a common federal rate applies to interstate sales. The interstate tax
follows the origin principle; the importing state allows credit for tax paid to the state of origin.
The normal interstate rate is 12 percent, but on interstate trade from rich to poor state the rate is 7
percent. This scheme benefits the less developed states in this fashion. The poor state levies its
normal rate on sales and reimburses at the lower 7 percent rate on imports, keeping the difference
on imports. On its exports, the poor state collects 12 percent which is reimbursed by the rich
state. The rich state receives the difference between its rate and 12 percent on imports consumed
on its territory. Tax paid on interstate sales is fully creditable in the importing state and thus at its
expense. The total tax paid on production and sale of goods is defined by the tax rate in the state
of final consumption. The ICMS administrations establish fiscal frontier checkpoints, what
amounts to customs posts, to control inflows and outflows. Vehicles are stopped to identify
goods they carry. The information collected here is transmitted to assessing authorities to verify
payment of tax on the transaction (Purohit, 1997:361). Of course, these checkpoints both interfere
with the free flow of trade and create an opportunity for corruption. As Ebril, Keen, Bodin, and
Summers (2001: 195) summarize for the interstate trade: “The exporting state receives revenue
equal to the product of the interstate rate and the value added there; the importing state collects
the amount by which the tax collected on final sales at its own rate exceeds the amount retained
by the exporting state.”
There is no administrative integration from federal to state levels between IPI and ICMS,
although ICMS registration is coordinated with federal income tax authorities. The IPI and ICMS
use different legal norms and different bookkeeping. Even though the national tax code defines
the main characteristics of ICMS, there are differences among the states in their taxes.
The National Public Finance Council (Conselho de Politica Fazendaria or CONFAZ), a body
consisting of all state secretaries of finance, acts to coordinate the interstate ICMS. The national
government establishes the rate on interstate sales, but CONFAZ determines exemptions or
reductions in rates. Rate changes are infrequent because unanimous consent is required for
changes, but there have been a number of exemptions approved. CONFAZ has not been
successful in stopping tax wars between the states fought through special tax preferences, one of
20
the ideas behind its founding, but it has been working to develop a unified taxpayer master file
that includes filer information from taxes at all levels as an aid to tax administration and this
would be a significant achievement.
The final tier of indirect tax is the municipal ISS (Imposto Sobre Servicos), a tax on services.
These taxes are on gross receipts of services in industrial, commercial, and professional sectors
and they are cumulative in that the amount due from a transaction is not adjusted for previous tax
paid. The taxes are levied and collected locally. Rates vary across municipalities from 0.5 to 10
percent, within a maximum established by federal law. Yields are modest in comparison to either
IPI or ICMS.
Because all the indirect taxes levied in Brazil cannot be fully purged from prices, the tax system
presents an important structural barrier to the competitiveness of Brazilian exports.
3.2.6.
Czech Republic
The pattern in the Czech Republic, a unitary state in which the local government administers only
minor taxes and fees, has much in common with many developing, transition, and developed
countries. The Constitution of the Czech Republic establishes the principle that taxes can be
imposed only on the basis of legal acts of the central parliament. Any local taxing authority must
thus be regulated by central government legislation. Most taxes levied for the benefit of local
government have been adopted by the national parliament and are collected by the central
government tax authority (the General Financial and Tax Board). Most tax revenue received by
municipalities in the Czech Republic comes from shared personal and corporate income taxes and
a property tax allocated to them. Local governments may choose the property tax rate to be
collected for them within boundaries established by the central parliament, but they have no
authority at all over the income tax rates or base. The income taxes are shared between central
and local governments with the local share distributed according to origin of collections and
population. The locality in which the property is located receives the property tax. The central
General Financial and Tax Board under the Ministry of Finance administers these taxes through
223 local offices. These offices administer all major taxes in the Republic, including those
accruing to both central and local governments.
The national parliament does, however, provide a small list of local fees and taxes of limited
revenue productivity that may optionally be levied by municipalities, although subject to centrally
controlled rate limits: dog fees, resort and recreation fees on visitors, tax on use of public space,
fees on entry tickets, fees on recreational units, motor vehicle entry fees, and fees on gambling
machines. Over 90 percent of Czech municipalities levy at least one of the taxes; the most
productive are those on use of public space and gambling. These fees are overall generally
unproductive, yielding only 2.7 percent of local tax revenue (including the shared taxes as local
taxes) in 1999 (OECD, 2001, 27). However, these fees are administered by local government tax
offices that are fully responsible for assessment, collection, enforcement, audit / inspection, and
first level appeals for these taxes. These local offices are entirely distinct from the local offices of
the central tax administration. (Kubatova et al, 2000).
This revenue assignment presents a façade of fiscal autonomy, including autonomous
administration, but because the sources assigned have only minimal revenue potential, the
experience provides little evidence of the actual administrative capacity of local administrations.
Rigorous administration has little revenue potential and the locality may rationally be less than
vigorous in administration. At the margin, revenue at local control is insignificant.
21
3.2.7.
Hungary
Hungary, another unitary state, places authority to tax and responsibility for administering taxes
that have been levied at two levels: the central level and the local level. The former collect taxes
levied by the central government, including both taxes that support services provided by the
central government and taxes that are shared or otherwise distributed to support local government
services. The local tax authorities administer taxes levied by the local governments. The central
Tax and Financial Control Office, an independent authority of the national government,
administers the income taxes, the value-added tax, and central excises through nineteen offices
operating around the country and four offices in Budapest. The local government tax offices
administer the taxes levied by the local government; these offices are independent of local offices
of the Tax and Financial Control Office and of each other. They have no contact save for
exchanges of information.
When Hungary established a one-tier local government system in the Local Self-Government
Law (1990), it created a system of local taxes to support a portion of the cost of the services to be
provided by these governments. These local governments receive shares of certain centrallyraised revenues (individual income tax, vehicle tax, and rental fees for agricultural land) and
receive state grants, but they also levy their own assigned taxes. The 1990 law provides the local
tax options and municipal governments choose which taxes they will adopt and what rates will
apply.
Localities are permitted six types of taxes: (i) a local business tax based on net sales revenue of
products or services sold, net of the cost of goods sold, the value of subcontractor’s work, and the
cost of materials; (ii) a communal tax on private individuals (a flat amount per dwelling); (iii) a
communal tax on businesses (tax based on number of employees); (iv) a land tax (tax based on
either area of plot or its market value); (v) a building tax (tax based on either useful surface area
or market value); and (vi) a tourism tax (tax based on number of guest nights spent, charge per
guest night, or net floor space). Design options are limited, however, because the national law
prescribes who will be subject to tax, how the bases will be defined, and what the maximum rate
will be. For the nation as a whole, local taxes generated 39.8 percent of current local revenue in
1997, up from 15.5 percent in 1991, when the options were new. (Hogye et al., 2000, p. 238)
The local business tax is the most productive, accounting for more than 80 percent of local
government tax revenue. A small number of taxpayers, sometimes only one, may pay half or
more of total tax revenue in some jurisdictions. In these instances, the local government
sometimes negotiates with the large taxpayers the amount that will be paid and sometimes those
large taxpayers expect extraordinary rights to participate in decisions about how local revenue
will be spent. When a business taxpayer operates permanently in more than one jurisdiction, the
taxpayer determines the division of the base between jurisdictions.
The local tax offices perform the standard functions of tax administration: taxpayer registration,
assessment and processing of declarations, receipt of payments, delinquency control, and audit.
To facilitate this work, local government tax offices use the same taxpayer identification numbers
as do the central government tax offices, so a single identifier applies for all local taxes. Central
and local files, although using the same identifier, are not integrated. However, the local tax
authority may request information from the central tax administration on taxpayers within its
jurisdiction, an important tool in identifying taxpayers who are non-compliant with the local
taxes. Central authorities give local governments the software needed for computer-based
taxpayer registration, thus allowing a uniform system of registration across the administrations
(OECD, 2001, 43). Local governments may not, however, access bank accounts to clear tax
22
obligations, so the central offices have this collection advantage. Most localities appear to do no
serious audit of tax returns submitted to them.
The taxes allowed local governments in Hungary may not be high on the list of preferred
alternatives for assignment to this tier of government. However, particularly in contrast to the
experience with assignment of minor taxes to local government in the Czech Republic, the taxes
in Hungary have proven to make a considerable contribution to the finance of local government
services and the local governments make a concerted effort to administer them. Serious options
have brought a serious local administration and increased fiscal autonomy.
3.2.8.
Estonia.
Estonia offers its localities authority to levy and administer a sales tax. The taxes are on the gross
receipts of sales to final consumers and may not be levied at a rate exceeding 1 percent. Local
officials verify taxpayer reports by checking reported gross receipts against VAT declaration of
sales. They enforce the taxes by denying operating licenses to businesses that have not paid the
tax. Localities may choose to contract with the National Tax Board for collection of the tax.
(Sootla et al, 2000).
3.2.9
Property Tax Experience
Real property taxes are often cited as good candidates for independent subnational
administration.23 Indeed, few fiscally significant taxes are more susceptible to local
administration than the property tax. As McCluskey and Williams (1999, 5) point out, real
property “is visible, immobile, and a clear indicator of one form of wealth. The property tax is
thus difficult to avoid and if well administered can represent a non-distortionary and highly
efficient fiscal tool.” However, except in a small number of countries, notably the United States
and Canada (Almy, 2000), the tax has not been used to its full potential and is often levied, if at
all, at the central level. 24 This application significantly reduces the contribution that the tax
potentially could make to local fiscal autonomy, both in terms of giving local governments a tax
whose rate they can control and in terms of giving them a tax that could be locally administered.
There are so few fiscally significant taxes that can be satisfactorily applied at the local level, it is
unfortunate when they are assigned to a tier of government that has abundant other taxes at its
disposal. When localities do administer the tax, they are responsible for maintaining property and
ownership records, determining taxable property values, calculating and distributing property tax
bills, managing receipt of payment, and applying tax enforcement actions against non-payers
(Eckert, 1990).25 As has been noted previously, the quality of their administration, particularly
23
Application of a real property tax requires a fiscal cadastre or register of all parcels that includes for each
its ownership, location, area, improvements, land use, and assessed value. To base the tax on current
market value also requires an active free market for the properties being taxed. However, real property
taxes can be based on standards other than current market value, including area or administrative formulae
(physical features with adjustment coefficients), either permanently or as precursors to market valuation
when markets develop.
24
A common argument for centralization and against independent local administration of real property
taxes involves economies of scale, specialization of staff, and computerization. However, no advantage
from size has been found in empirical evidence from the United States – smaller unit valuations are at least
as accurate as those done in larger jurisdictions. (Bell, 1999, 14). Smaller units may achieve quality by
contracting for outside expertise, thus negating any size advantage.
25
The total property tax on a parcel is normally divided into semi-annual or quarterly installments to be
paid through the year for taxpayer convenience, thus creating an extremely irregular revenue stream for the
government.
23
valuation of the tax base, is usually subject to evaluation by higher levels of government and
those higher levels often provide training and technical assistance to local administration.
Why aren’t locally administered local real property taxes more heavily exploited as a subnational
revenue source?26 The reasons are considerably more political than economic. First, the
difficulty and cost of administering an equitable property tax is exaggerated by those more
familiar with income and consumption taxes than with property taxation. The property tax is
based on stock values at a point in time, not on exchange-based flow values. As Bell and
Bowman (1997, 77) point out, “…the fact that most property does not sell in a market transaction
each year means that the value is not observable.” This requires an assessment of the tax base,
not an accounting exercise of gathering records for the tax period. And this assessment work is
costly. However, there is virtually no compliance cost associated with the property tax, so the
administrative cost is the total cost of collection; there is no compliance expense required of the
taxpayer – no recordkeeping, no forms, no calculations. 27 The total collection cost for a typical
real property tax (administration plus compliance) is not dramatically different from the total cost
of collecting a sales or income tax when one recognizes the importance of including both
administrative and compliance costs in considering the cost of collection (Almy 2001, 9). In
essence, part of the bias against the real property tax involves a miscalculation of the collection
cost of the taxes, in particular the difference between the generally taxpayer passive property tax
versus the taxpayer active income and consumption taxes. And the difficulty issue is exaggerated
as well: in contrast with the focus of the private fee appraiser, the tax assessor is concerned less
with the precise valuation of a single parcel than with producing a uniform standard for
distribution of the property tax burden across parcels throughout the assessor’s jurisdiction. As
Dillinger (1991, 16) explains, “…it is important to distinguish tax valuation from the valuation
governments undertake when they intend to purchase a property outright. In the latter case, a
high standard of accuracy is required: the valuation must produce an absolute value in current
market terms, as the amount changing hands will equal the entire value of the asset. Valuation
for tax purposes, in contrast, requires only a determination of the relative value of properties at a
common point in time. As it involves only an exchange equal to only a small percentage of the
property’s value, accuracy can be justifiably traded off in the interest of cost and administrative
simplicity.” For that purpose, the techniques of mass assessment are well developed.28
Valuation must be an estimating process and, thus, a market based property tax absolutely
requires a transparent and accessible appeals process in which errors (or worse) by the
government tax assessor can be resolved. Administrative equity for the property tax demands an
open and understandable appeals process, even more than it does for the income and consumption
bases that rely on filings by taxpayers, employers, and financial institutions. But a mass
26
Property tax reliance is considerably greater in developed countries than in developing and transition
countries In 1999, the mean percentage of total tax revenue from property taxes for high income OECD
members was 6.74 percent, compared with 2.44 percent for larger developing and transition countries.
(IMF, 1999)
27
Taxpayers in some countries, e. g., Sweden, Poland, Slovak Republic, may be required to provide
information to the tax authorities to assist their valuation work. Other countries require taxpayer valuation
along with reporting. This is particularly common for countries in transition, where the break from
government enterprise to private firm is underway or recently completed. Among developed countries,
Turkey probably places greatest responsibility on the property owner, requiring reporting, valuation, and
calculation of tax.
28
Mass assessment involves the application of a simple, formula-based valuation approach that minimizes
judgment of valuers and the requirement of honesty by the taxpayer. The formula is driven by easilyobservable physical characteristics of the property parcel, with valuation coefficients calculated from a
sample of observed market transactions.
24
assessment system can produce a high degree of assessment uniformity at reasonable total
collection cost.
As a practical matter, the property tax need not be market based. Some property taxes are flat
taxes on the parcel with adjustment for size, location, use, etc., and some property taxes are area
based, either with or without adjustment for location, use, and other factors. In Tanzania, the tax
is limited to buildings (the government owns all land) and is based on the estimated reproduction
cost of the structure. (Kelly and Musunu, 2000, 4) The alternatives sometimes have advantages.
For example, a simple area-based system affords a transparent measure for distribution of tax
burden: those with more land or a larger structure pay a larger share of the property tax than do
those with less. Zorn, Tesche, and Cornia (2000, 86) propose such a scheme in BosniaHerzegovina because the area base “reduces the contentiousness of what usually is the most
controversial administrative question – the method used to value property.” In that environment,
reducing contention was an important policy concern; the simplicity and transparency of the area
base would have been a real advantage. Area-based systems, as opposed to market value based
systems, are common in countries in transition from Soviet-style systems “because they satisfy a
widely held belief that taxation decisions are official acts that must be satisfied by the proper
authority, an approach at odds with a tax base drawn from market data…As a result, sometimes,
the best way to introduce a value-based tax is to introduce market elements into the area-based
system.” (Malme and Youngman, 2001, 7) An area-based assessment scheme, with adjustment
for location and type of property, is used in the Slovak Republic (Bryson and Cornia, 2000, 8 – 9)
Poland provides one particular example of an area-based, municipally-administered system (Bell
and Regulska, 1992). In this instance, individuals and corporations have been required to present
lists of their real estate to local officials as a part of the process, making property owners more
actively involved in the taxing process than is usually the case for such taxes. McCluskey,
Plimmer, and Connellan (2002) suggest a British-style banded property tax in developing and
transition environments; such assessments can be simple and inexpensive to administer,
politically acceptable, transparent, equitable, and revenue-productive even when market data are
scarce and technology is limited.
Second, in many countries, the property tax has powerful political enemies. The tax strikes
people with wealth accumulations quite directly, the real properties to be taxed are obvious to all,
and the levy itself is visible. People with considerable property wealth usually have considerable
political power and use that power to thwart taxes that aim directly at their holdings. They prefer
taxes borne by others; preventing a real property tax provides them a way to duck a greater (and
arguably fairer) share of the cost of government. As Burgess and Stern (1993, 802) suggest, low
utilization of property and land taxation “reflects the success of the resistance of the rich and
powerful to measures which harm their interests.”
Third, property owners have few avoidance options for the property tax. Because the tax is
usually administered with few compliance requirements placed on property owners, the taxpayer
has few alternatives for controlling liability that are within the law. And when valuation and
calculation are done by a government agent, as is typically the case, the taxpayer has scant
opportunity to fiddle and finagle independently to reduce the amount of tax owed.29 Evading a
real property tax requires active collusion with government officials, not concealment and
29
In Russia and some other parts of the former Soviet Union, operation of the property tax is hindered by a
requirement that structures be completed and registered with the local authorities before the property may
be added to the tax lists. As a result, many properties are never quite finished, although they are functional
and occupied. Western countries avoid this problem by assessing unfinished structures on a percent
completed basis.
25
accounting tricks; it cannot be done independently by the taxpayer, which is contrary to the case
with the taxpayer active taxes on income or consumption.30 Of course, the taxpayer may simply
ignore the property tax that has been levied; in countries like India and the Philippines, as much
of the tax that is collected often goes uncollected. And municipalities in the Slovak Republic
have had difficulty collecting real estate taxes from insolvent businesses. But these failures to
pay are evasion (outside the law), not avoidance (within the law), and even these tax payments
can be guaranteed, because, if there is sufficient political will, the parcel of property itself is in
the jurisdiction and can be claimed by the taxing government if payment is not made.
Another collection approach, the “rate clearance certificate,” from Kenya, relies on taxpayer
initiative to clear outstanding liabilities and is effective when the property is transferred or when
the property holder seeks a local business permit or some other local service is being requested.
It has not proven particularly effective. (Kelly 2000, 49). Publishing the names of delinquent
property owners is also often done, but without much apparent impact. Tax sales (action against
the property itself) do the trick; selling the parcel to recover taxes owed brings owners forward
with payment in hand. However, tax sales are politically difficult, even in the most developed
countries.
There are a good number of other international examples of independently administered local
property taxes. Local governments in larger urban areas often are responsible for administration
of their real property taxes, even when subnational governments are given no other significant
fiscal autonomy. (Bahl and Linn, 1992) The Netherlands offers one recent example of a
successful nationwide decentralization of property tax administration. Prior to 1992, the central
government administered property taxes. Since then, administration of the property tax
(onroerende zaak belasting) has become the responsibility of mayors and councils of
municipalities. Municipalities are responsible for maintaining property records, for valuation of
properties (at market value), and for collection of the taxes that they have levied on the
properties.31 Municipalities may require owners of properties to submit returns with information
about their parcels and owners may be required to give their opinion on value of the property in
the process of valuation. Both owner and tenant must provide rental information; the tax is
legally paid by both users and owners of properties. Municipalities are almost evenly divided
between those using civil servants for assessment and those using contract assessment firms. In
both cases, assessments are performed on a mass basis and disputes on individual parcel
valuations are taken to the courts for resolution. The National Valuation Board must approve
local revaluation plans and makes ratio studies (studies of the ratio of assessed to current market
value) to evaluate the uniformity of assessments done by a municipality, but it is not actively
involved in administering the taxes. Tax rates vary from municipality to municipality, according
to choices made by councils, and there are considerable differences in tax paid on comparable
properties, depending on the location of the parcel in the country. Although most local revenue
30
The taxpayer can, however, act independently to reduce personal property tax. For instance, when
household personal property taxes were levied in the American Midwest, property owners would take care
to hide expensive items from view when the local tax assessor came around and, if the assessor left a form
for self-reporting of property owned, would omit to mention those items. This widespread perjury was an
important factor behind the repeal of most household personal property taxes in these states. Of course,
these actions were evasion, not avoidance.
31
Until the late 1980s, Dutch municipalities could opt for property taxation according to area (Sterks and
de Kam, 1991).
26
comes from central transfers, the country does have a functioning system for municipal property
taxation in place.32
3.2.
Shared and Cooperative Administration
When there are multiple tiers of generally independent tax administration, there are several
possibilities for shared and cooperative administration both vertically and horizontally. Tax
administration can employ division of tasks among central and subnational government, with
lower units choosing tax base and rate and conducting certain function in administration while the
central government “co-administers” other functions.33 The core functions of tax administration –
taxpayer registration and service, declaration or assessment, revenue and taxpayer accounting,
delinquency control, audit, enforcement, and appeal or protest (Mikesell 1998: 179) – may, for a
particular tax, be divided among tax authorities according to technical competencies and some
functions may be performed by more than one authority.34 They will be performed for each tax,
but not necessarily by the government levying the tax and not necessarily all by the same
government.
The real property tax, while requiring considerable technical skill to obtain a uniform appraisal of
property, applies to a base that is quite immobile and non-fugitive and whose value very much
depends on local market conditions. In these circumstances, co-administration between central
and local government can be an appropriate organization structure. A cooperative division of
functions can combine local autonomy and familiarity with local conditions and central technical
skills. But nations have not reached the same conclusion about the assignment of functions
between central and local governments. This difference appears in the division in assignment of
valuation and collection responsibilities across several nations:
Central Valuation, Central Collection: France, Pakistan, Indonesia, Sweden, Jordan,
Albania, Armenia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Latvia, Russia, Portugal, Cyprus, Estonia,
Jamaica, Singapore.
Central Valuation, Local Collection: United Kingdom, Kenya (except largest cities),
Germany, Columbia, Austria, Turkey, Denmark, New Zealand, Malawi.
Local Valuation, Central Collection: Tunisia, Slovenia.
Local Valuation, Local Collection: Brazil, India, Japan, Mexico (sometimes state),
Kenya (largest cities), Philippines, Hungary, Romania, Slovak Republic, Greece, Italy,
Netherlands, Switzerland (cantons), United States.35
32
The fate of the Dutch local property taxes is unclear. The liberal part has sought recentralization of the
property tax under a different label. National elections scheduled for early 2003 may clarify the ultimate
result.
33
Kelly (2003, 22) notes the importance of property tax “co-administration” in Indonesia’s decentralization
program: “The key to success is to maintain the correct balance between central and local involvement in
administration – not to make administration either a purely central or local government responsibility.”
34
Technologies may differ, but “the functions themselves have been essentially constant since at least
biblical times” (Baldwin 1996: 105).
35
Dillinger (1991), Almy (2001), and McCluskey and Williams (1999). Municipalities in Estonia perform
some duties in administration of the property tax, but the central government has the dominant role in
assessment and collection. Local law enforcement officials in the United States frequently serve as
collection agents for both local and state tax administrators in dealing with difficult taxpayers.
27
Denmark illustrates one intergovernmental division of functions, where revenue from three kinds
of property tax is assigned to subnational governments: a land tax on all plots of land; a service
tax on buildings used for administration, commerce, and manufacturing; and a property value tax
on owner-occupied dwellings and summerhouses. The central government has main
responsibility for valuation of immovable property. Central government appoints 224 valuation
committees of three members with secretarial assistance from the municipality. The basic
information for valuation and collection is stored in computerized registers. The Central Customs
and Tax Administration, part of the national Ministry of Taxation, maintains a register of sales
prices and the municipalities maintain a valuation and collection register with (i) description of
the land parcels from the national survey and land register and (ii) a building and dwelling
register with the description of buildings and dwelling units. The Central Customs and Tax
Administration carries out the central coordination of valuation and gives instructions to the
valuation committees. A property tax office in each municipality collects the municipal and
county share of the land tax and service tax. The computer-generated annual property tax bill,
divided into installments as determined by the municipality, also includes municipal charges on
the property (for roads, sewerage, district heating, street lighting, water, etc.) Payment can be
made in cash at the municipal office, by the postal giro system or through the bank automatic
payment system. Central government collects the property value tax via withholding in
combination with the individual income tax.
Although independent administration is the rule for tax administration in the United States, there
are some prominent exceptions. Cooperative administration is frequently used for administration
of property tax on certain complex properties (industrial property, telecommunications,
transportation, etc.): a state agency handles these complex assessments while local governments
administer the remainder of the tax, including assessment of less complex properties. Local
governments do administer, along with their own tax, the property taxes that a few state
governments continue to levy. The accompanying Appendix Two describes other cooperative
arrangements between independent tax administrations in the United States.
Tax administration in Canada provides other examples of joint administration. As earlier noted,
tax administration for provincial and territorial taxes mixes centralized and independent
administration for individual and corporate income and sales taxes. The pattern for the major
local tax – the property tax – is, however, one of cooperative administration between the regional
and local governments. Arrangements for local government finances in Canada are left to the
individual provinces and territories, not the federal government. Property taxes yield virtually all
the tax revenue collected by local governments in Canada (98 percent) and localities collect 80
percent of all property taxes levied.36 Local governments establish their own property tax rates
and manage collection of taxes they have levied, but the province or territory establishes basic
structure and requirements for the local taxes, establishes the policy for valuation of property
parcels, and is responsible for insuring that assessment is done according to the assessment
standard that reflects provincial tax policy. Thus, overall administration of the property tax
combines centralized and independent administration of the collection functions. For uniformity,
valuation is centralized while the other functions are handled by the local government levying the
tax.
The provinces use four different organizational structures to assure uniform assessments. Most
also are organized to provide the efficiency advantages of large scale operation:
36
As a share of GDP, these property taxes are among the highest in the world. That makes good quality
assessment particularly important.
28
(i)
Crown corporations: British Columbia (BC Assessment), New Brunswick (Service
New Brunswick), Newfoundland and Labrador (Municipal Assessment Agency), and
Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency) have set up
government corporations to do property assessments for local governments in the
province. The corporations are owned by provincial government with representation
of the localities on their governing boards.
(ii)
Non-profit corporation: Ontario (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation,
MPAC) has established a non-profit corporation owned by municipalities in the
province to administer provincial assessment policies. MPAC has a head office with
most of its staff located in thirty-six field offices across the province. Property
owners may appeal MPAC assessments to an independent Assessment Review
Board, whose decisions are final and binding.
(iii)
Provincial Tax Assessment Departments: Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward
Island, and the territories administer assessment thorough traditional government
agencies.
(iv)
Provincial Assessment Supervision: Alberta Assessment Services, an agency of
provincial government, establishes assessment standards, provides technical support,
and maintains quality control for assessments. The municipalities do the actual
assessment, however, according to the promulgated standards.
The corporations provide other services to local governments, but property assessment is the
principal service that they offer. The focus of each arrangement is to improve the uniformity of
assessment of the tax base across the province or territory; without such uniformity, an equitable
application of the property tax is impossible. The taxing locality then can levy and collect the tax
applied to the base that has been assessed according to the regionally-uniform assessment
standard.
Land tax administration in Estonia presents a somewhat different approach to cooperative
administration. Estonia, the first country of the former Soviet Union to adopt a market value
based land tax (1993), introduced the tax as an element of broader reforms toward fiscal
decentralization and privatization. The tax yields only around 6.5 percent of local government
revenue, with shares slightly higher in rural areas than in urban areas. Local councils annually set
the tax rate within limits set by the central governments on the capital value of the land without
buildings, timber, plants, or structures.37 Administration involves both central and local
governments. The National Land Board, part of the Ministry of Environment, estimates value
while the National Tax Board, part of the Ministry of Finance, collects the tax. Municipalities
collect information on property transactions and submit those data to the National Land Board
and provide the National Tax Board with information necessary to maintain its Land Tax
Register. At the conclusion of the valuation process, local officials calculate the taxable value of
each land parcel. The National Tax Board administers tax billing and collections through its local
offices. Taxes are collected in three installments through commercial banks. Unpaid taxes
become liens against the property and the National Tax Board may seek sale of property for
nonpayment of tax. Administrative costs from both levels of government is estimated to be
roughly 5 percent of collections.
37
Since 1996, land tax collections have been local revenue. However, to encourage quicker privatization
of municipal land, from the start of 2000, the municipalities receive only the tax on private land; the tax on
land under public leases goes to the central government.
29
Programs that centralize valuation but leave other elements of property tax administration to
lower levels are found in several countries. For example, Malawi taxes property on a ratings
basis; the central government Ministry of Lands and Valuation does the property valuation for
local rating and the local authorities set the rates and handle collection (Chinhadze and Dziko).
In Turkey, the national Ministry of Finance estimates property values, with a considerable
requirement for self-assessment, while the municipalities collect the taxes they have levied on
that property. That mix of functional responsibilities meets the needs of many countries seeking
to localize revenue authority and administration while wishing to maintain a broad uniformity
standard for application of the property tax.
Finally, Mexico presents a special case of cooperative administration. In general, the central
government there administers federal taxes and all states have signed agreements whereby they
trade the exercise of most of their taxing authority for a share of federal revenues. However, state
governments sign agreements (convenios de colaboracion administrative) with the federal
government which allows them to audit and otherwise verify compliance with federal laws in
exchange for a significant portion of additional federal revenues they locate. That gives them
revenue based on their particular knowledge of local economic activities about which the central
administration might not be aware.38
3.3.1. Performance Standards with Cooperative or Contract Administration
Shared administration allows independence while permitting administrative specialization. It
provides many of the advantages that fully centralized administration might afford, while
permitting considerable autonomy and advantages of small, local operations. When the decision
to cooperate and share is made voluntarily by the subnational government, there can be no
argument that such relationships interfere with fiscal autonomy. If performance by the central
authorities falls below the standard expected by the subnational government, the subnational
government can terminate the relationship. When shared administration is required, however, it
is more difficult for the relationship to remain satisfactory. Higher-tier governments are not in
the habit of offering performance guarantees to lower-tier governments and, when there are many
subnational units whose taxes are being administered, producing such guarantees for each of them
would be difficult.39
For property tax valuation, the guarantee would be in terms of achieving the legally-intended
assessment ratio or level of assessment (the ratio of the value determined for tax purposes [the
assessed value] to the legally targeted value [often current market value]) and of achieving a
target level of disparity of assessment ratios to assure that the tax is distributed across properties
in the way that the law intends. Valuation is the most difficult stage in property tax systems and
achieving an appropriate degree of assessment-ratio uniformity is critical for levy of an equitable
38
In the United States, some states administering local sales taxes provide the local governments periodic
lists of their local sales tax payers so that the locality can check for omissions and request state enforcement
action.
39
Some American states charge local governments when they administer local income or sales taxes.
While the service is often provided at no cost, a number of states charge for the service and pricing can be
contentious. When the authorizing law prescribes a charge equal to the cost of collection, there frequently
is a dispute on the cost concept used for setting the charge, with localities proposing that cost be marginal
cost (or some concept that translates to that) and the state proposing a charge based on an average cost
concept. When the authorizing law sets a charge, the charge is almost always seen as too high. The least
contentious outcome appears to result from a law that allows the state to set a price based on cost of
providing the service, subject to a maximum charge as a percent of collections.
30
and productive tax. In the United States, a number of states conduct this uniformity testing of the
assessment work done by local jurisdictions to assure that these governments – either themselves
or the contractors they have hired to perform the work – are doing an adequate job of valuation.
The Canadian corporations that provide property tax valuation services to localities regularly
report their uniformity and level of assessment statistics as a measure of the quality of the work
they have done.
For taxes other than the real property tax, the guarantee would need to be in terms of certain
activities associated with administering the tax (taxpayer satisfaction with and accuracy of
assistance provided by taxpayer service centers, audit coverage rate, delinquency rate, closure of
account receivables, speed and accuracy of return processing and payment deposit, etc.).40
Calculating non-compliance rates and their distribution across types of taxpayers – the most
appropriate indicators of quality of tax administration for taxes placing considerable compliance
responsibilities on taxpayers – is generally not feasible for subnational units. Meeting revenue
targets or forecasts, although a tempting standard, would not be reasonable, in light of the
difficulty of making accurate revenue forecasts: Is the revenue target missed because of poor tax
collection or because of an inaccurate revenue forecast? Is the revenue target being exceeded
because of unexpectedly successful tax administration or because of an unexpectedly robust
economy driving revenue collections?41
4. Conclusion
Assignment of reasonable taxing powers helps give a government control over its fiscal destiny.
It allows the government, acting for its citizens, choice over its level of spending and how that
spending will be financed from segments of its economy. That is an important element for fiscal
autonomy. From the revenue side of the public economy, fiscal autonomy (and responsibility) is
greatest when the subnational government chooses what taxes it will levy, defines the bases it will
use, sets the rate and preference structure for those bases, and administers the taxes that have been
adopted. While surcharges on central tax bases can give a considerable degree of fiscal autonomy
without some of the problems that full autonomy can create, subnational governments may not
agree, if given the choice, that the autonomy thus given is adequate. In particular, they may be
concerned that a government not receiving the revenue from a tax that it administers is likely to
feel less urgency in collection of or for reform of that tax than are those using the revenue to
finance their operations. They may feel that administration in practice is inextricably intertwined
with tax policy and that, without having choice over administrative decisions, they lack
appropriate fiscal autonomy.
40
A few states of the United States use contract audits, in which taxpayer accounts selected for audit are
assigned to private audit entities. These contracts require certain qualifications for the auditor and
requirements for an approved audit workplan but do not include particular performance standards beyond
requiring that the completed audit reports pass the same quality checks as performed on in-house audits.
Contracts are not competitively bid, but rather audit assignments are made for fixed payments within an
expectation of work hour requirements from previous audit experience. Until around the second decade of
the twentieth century, American localities frequently contracted with “tax ferrets” to locate unreported and
untaxed properties, in exchange for a substantial share of the resulting tax revenue. Paying on the basis of
amounts collected normally is not a satisfactory standard, inasmuch as a substantial sum will be collected in
a mature voluntary compliance based system with essentially no administrative effort.
41
Kahn and colleagues (2001) find a Brazilian program to provide monetary compensation to tax collectors
based on individual and group performance in finding and collecting taxes from evaders to have had a great
impact on collection of fines. The bonus or reward (Retribuicao Adicional Variavel) was created in 1989
in the federal tax system.
31
International experience demonstrates that regional and local governments can be capable of
independent administration of the taxes they levy if the governments provide political will and
operational support. Capacity is critical, but capacity can be developed in a tax authority.
Cooperation and exchange of information – both horizontally and vertically – can improve
administration and can make compliance easier as well. Issues beyond capacity development,
technical assistance, and information exchange include (i) coordination of registration for national
and subnational taxes to ease business development and to facilitate information exchange for
administration; (ii) use of a single taxpayer identification number to the greatest extent possible;
(iii) exchange of audit and other compliance data to the fullest extent permitted by law; (iv)
locating taxpayer services offices together to the greatest possible extent; and (v) coordinating
payment mechanisms for central and subnational taxes. Cooperation does often entail some
reduction in administrative autonomy, however. When cooperation is optional, its practice
certainly proves benefits to all cooperating administrative units.
32
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37
APPENDIX ONE : FEDERAL – PROVINCIAL TAX ADMINISTRATION IN CANADA: REVENUE
AUTONOMY AND ADMINISTRATIVE DIVERSITY
Canada offers an unparalleled variety of administrative arrangement for collection of subnational
taxes. Provinces and local governments must raise a considerable share of the money they spend,
but they have strong fiscal options for doing so – they have access to lucrative tax bases – and
this autonomy is exercised through a wide variety of administrative systems, including some
independent, some centralized, and some cooperative.
Provincial and national governments in Canada levy taxes on general consumption, corporate
income, and personal income. The ways in which the levels of government cooperate in the
administration of these common bases present great diversity in organization structure. Some
subnational taxes are centrally administered, some federal taxes are administered at the
subnational level, and some taxes are independently administered. Federal administration by
Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) is free of charge if the provincial tax mimics its
national counterpart, is charged on the incremental cost of administration if the tax is harmonized
but somewhat different from its national counterpart, and is charged at the average cost of
administration if the tax is not harmonized. CCRA retains all penalties and interest, but provinces
do not have to absorb bad debts.
A Federal – Provincial Committee on Taxation, under the federal Department of Finance,
provides a forum discussing federal and provincial tax policy changes, including arrangements
for the collection agreements between the governments.
The taxes involved in the administration schemes constitute the bulk of tax revenue collected by
the provinces – the income taxes constitute about half the total and the general sales taxes, about
one-quarter.
General Sales Taxes. All provinces but Alberta levy a general sales tax and the federal
government levies a Goods and Service (value added) tax.42 Each province decides whether to
link its tax to the Goods and Service Tax (GST) and whether to have the CCRA administer the
economically equivalent taxes. The GST is imposed at a 7 percent rate; the effective provincial
rates range from zero to 10.7 percent, causing combined rates (national plus provincial) to range
from 7 to 17.7 percent.43 The first provincial sales taxes were adopted in the 1930s; the GST was
adopted in 1991 (replacing the archaic national manufacturers’ sales tax). At the beginning, some
smaller vendors experienced problems in compliance with the two similar taxes, but time and
experience have reduced those complaints.
There are three different arrangements for administration of the provincial taxes that have been
chosen by the provinces:
(i)
42
Independent administration. Five provinces (Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan,
British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island) continue to levy and administer
their own retail sales taxes independently of the GST. The tax bases are
different (the GST taxes services much more broadly and excludes business
purchases more fully than do the provincial taxes, none of which are exactly the
same), the registration process and rules are different, and the taxes maintain
None of the territories levy a general sales tax.
Quebec and Prince Edward Island apply their sales tax to prices including the Goods and Services Tax;
others apply their tax to prices net of GST.
43
38
their traditional methods for removing tax from inputs (suspension for the
provincial taxes and credit for the GST). Rates range from 6 percent in
Saskatchewan to 7 percent (British Columbia, Manitoba) to 8 percent (Ontario)
to 10 percent (Prince Edward Island). These provinces turned down the offer of
harmonization with the GST because of the loss of fiscal sovereignty it implied.
(ii)
Harmonized national / provincial taxation. Provincial sales taxes in Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, and Newfoundland / Labrador and the GST levied there were
replaced by a harmonized sales (value-added) tax (HST) in 1997. The single 15
percent rate – a 7 percent federal rate and an 8 percent provincial rate – applies to
the same base as the GST elsewhere. This base is somewhat broader than the
previous provincial bases, but the new rate is somewhat lower. CCRA
administers the HST. Businesses registered for GST anywhere in Canada must
collect and remit the 15 percent tax on sales made in these participating
provinces, including sales shipped or mailed into the provinces. The provinces
receive revenue according to a formula based on consumption patterns. Changes
in rate and base require unanimous agreement of the provinces. In effect, CCRA
collects a GST at a higher rate in these provinces than applies elsewhere in
Canada, then shares the proceeds from this higher rate with the three provinces
on the basis of estimated consumption spending in the provinces.
(iii)
Combined provincial administration. The Ministere du Revenu de Quebec
administers the GST / HST in accord with federal rules for entities in the
province, as well as administers its 7.5 percent provincial sales tax (QST).
Business purchases are relieved from GST / HST by input tax credit and from
QST by input tax refund. On trade between provinces the provincial tax is
subject to zero-rating for exports and to reverse charging on imports by registered
traders. No adjustments are made on interprovincial trade by final consumers.
The two taxes apply to virtually the same base (financial services being one
exception); the QST applies to the GST-inclusive price. The QST almost
certainly provides broader coverage of household consumption and produces
considerably less pyramiding because of its restructuring toward the GST / HST
concepts than do the other provincial sales taxes. An audit plan is agreed
between federal and provincial authorities and the results are reported to CCRA.
Quebec retains autonomy over tax base and rate and receives an undisclosed
federal payment for collection of the federal tax.
All provinces and territories levy and administer their own selective excise taxes.
Corporate Income Tax. CCRA administers corporate income tax for the federal government
and for most provinces and territories. Only corporations located in Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta
file a separate provincial corporate tax return; elsewhere, a single return covers national and
provincial corporate income taxes.44 Federally defined income is the base for these combined
returns; the provinces establish credits, small business thresholds, and rates. (CCRA and
Department of Finance, 2000)
44
The provinces that administer their own corporate income tax do receive information on CCRA
assessments and review them for possible provincial tax implications. These audit pick-ups constitute an
integral part of the enforcement strategy for the provinces. It is, for instance, the primary element of the
audit strategy for smaller corporations in Ontario.
39
Tax rates vary across the provinces and territories: The general rate for non –manufacturing and
processing income ranges from 9.04 percent in Quebec to 17 percent in Saskatchewan. Some
provinces and territories (Saskatchewan, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and
Yukon) apply a reduced rate for manufacturing and processing income. All provinces and
territories except Quebec have a reduced rate for small business income which ranges from a low
of 3.5 percent in New Brunswick to a high of 7.5 percent in Prince Edward Island. Quebec levies
a flat rate of 9.04 percent on all kinds of business income.
Personal Income Tax. All provinces and territories except Québec have Tax Collection
Agreements (TCAs) with the federal government to administer their provincial personal income
taxes (PIT). TCAs were introduced in 1962 and contained an administrative mechanism to
harmonize tax structures while respecting fiscal autonomy. Each province imposed a single rate
of personal tax, calculated as a percentage of basic federal tax (i.e., "tax on tax"). Under this
system, the federal government determined the underlying tax base and rate structure, thereby
harmonizing the structures. Some provinces felt that such tax arrangements unduly restricted
their ability to determine PIT policy. In 1997 the federal government permitted new agreements
that would base provincial tax directly on federal taxable income, not federal liability.
The new system, called Tax on Income (TONI), allows provinces and territories to set their own
tax brackets and tax rates, allows supplements to existing non-refundable tax credits, and permits
new non-refundable tax credits. The TONI system basically parallels the federal calculation, but
the starting point is taxable income, not a basic federal liability.
All provinces and territories except Quebec have adopted the TONI system. Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia introduced the new system for the
2000 and beyond. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Northwest
Territories, Yukon and Nunavut introduced the new system for the 2001 and beyond. Quebec
continues to administer its own provincial personal income taxes.
Most provinces apply upward graduated rate brackets with initial rates ranging from 6.05 to 16
percent and highest rates from 11.16 to 24 percent, but Alberta levies a flat rate of 10 percent on
all income. The brackets are generally inflation-indexed.
Overall. The administrative structures seek to reduce complexity and duplication of compliance
and administration and to encourage harmonization of tax structures while giving provinces a
degree of flexibility in taxation. The observation by Bird and Gendron (2001, 31) about the
Canadian VAT – provincial sales tax relationship applies administration of the entire tax system:
“The Canadian system is complicated. It lacks conceptual purity, and no doubt, violates some
efficiency and administrative criteria, but it works.”
40
APPENDIX TWO. THE UNITED STATES: INDEPENDENT TAX ADMINISTRATION AND
VOLUNTARY COOPERATION BY FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
In the United States, finances are organized around the presumption that governments will
generally be responsible for financing the services that they provide, although that is less so for
localities than for the central or regional governments, and that these governments will be
responsible for deciding how to administer the taxes they levy. In the United States “…tax
policy and administration…are perhaps as decentralized as in any country in the world” (Duncan
and McLure, 1997, 74) States have almost unlimited discretion as to the taxes they levy and,
when levied, they must administer those taxes themselves. American local governments operate
within the rules established by their state governments; some administer the taxes they levy and
some have state administration. This discretion means that almost every feasible administrative
structure is found somewhere in the country, except centralized tax administration by the federal
tax authorities (the IRS) of taxes levied by state or local government. From 1976 to 1992, the
IRS could administer state income taxes, provided the state adopted the federal tax base and met a
few other conditions. No state accepted the offer, even those whose income tax was driven by the
federal base, because state lawmakers generally believed the offer to excessively constrain their
autonomous definition and implementation of tax policy.
Subnational governments in the United States levy and administer a wide array of taxes, the most
prominent including retail sales taxes, income taxes, property taxes, and the traditional selective
excises (motor fuels, tobacco products, and alcoholic beverages). Almost all the states use some
part of the federal law as starting point for defining the base and other provisions of their income
taxes, both individual and corporate, but they enforce and collect each tax on their own.
(Penniman, 1980) There is no federal general sales tax, so states must by necessity design,
collect, and enforce these taxes on their own, although they do tend to copy each other.45 The
state sales taxes are accompanied by compensating use taxes that apply when an otherwise
taxable product is to be consumed in the state without payment of sales tax, often because the
purchase was made from an unregistered vendor from out of state (Due and Mikesell, 1994;
Mikesell, 1999). Unless the remote vendor is registered with the state tax department, the use tax
must be collected as a direct tax from the purchaser, a decidedly difficult, inefficient, and
generally impossible approach to collecting a transaction-based tax.46
The states are free to organize tax administration as they see fit – multiple agencies within a state
administering the several state taxes and single agencies, agencies headed by single individuals
and by multi-member boards, appointed and elected heads of tax agencies, separate tax
departments and tax administration within agencies having major non-tax assignments (e.g., state
comptroller or departments of treasury, finance, or administration). Except for a few smaller
states (for example, Vermont and Rhode Island) administration is decentralized: “…regional
offices are used usually for taxpayer contacts, base stations for field auditors, and offices for field
45
The sales taxes apply to sale of final product, using suspension certificates to control pyramiding. Most
states levy their taxes broadly to goods, but only selectively to services. Not all sales taxes combat
pyramiding with suspension certificates. For example, the Russian regional sales taxes manage by taxing
all sales to individuals but exempting all sales to legal entities paid by barter or by bank transfer. (Mikesell,
1999, 17).
46
Only retailers with a physical presence in the state are required to register as use tax collectors, under
current judicial interpretation of the constitutional requirement that states not place an undue burden on
interstate commerce. With the growing significance of remote vendors (Internet sellers, etc.), states are
seeking a federal law that would revise the physical presence rule to expand registration requirements.
States face similar problems with loss of revenue from interstate sales of cigarettes that do not bear proper
tax for the state of their consumption.
41
enforcement and compliance workers.” (Mikesell 1981: 225)47 Regional units seek to improve
communication between taxpayers and the tax agency, while controlled by the central tax
department for unified implementation of tax policy. Taxpayer registration for state taxes is
distinct from federal registration. Some states require separate registration for each state tax
(sales, corporate income, excises, licenses, etc.), although one-stop registration procedures and
automatic registration for multiple taxes after completing a single questionnaire are widely used.
Taxpayer identification numbers for business taxes may differ from numbers used for the federal
system (particularly for sales taxes), but individual income tax numbers are the same for state and
federal taxes. Departments do not have special large taxpayer units, although all divisions give
special attention to the biggest taxpayers to safeguard the tax base. Only a few states devote
much attention to rigorous measurement of tax compliance rates, but those that do find
compliance to be comparable to that achieved by the federal IRS. For example, the state of
Minnesota estimated tax gaps (the difference between what should be reported and what actually
is paid) at 8.2 percent for its sales and use tax, 12.0 percent for its individual income tax, and 3.0
percent for its corporate income tax. (Minnesota Department of Revenue 2001: 12). Similar
work by the state of Washington estimated the non-compliance for its sales tax to be 1.3 percent
of total liability; for its use tax, 27.9 percent of liability; and for its business and occupation tax (a
multi-rate turnover tax), 1.5 percent of liability. (Washington Department of Revenue 2003).
States benefit from income tax enforcement efforts of the IRS, even without piggybacking, but
they achieve excellent sales tax compliance on their own because there is no federal tax to
provide an enforcement halo effect. Indeed, where estimates have been made, state sales tax
compliance rates are better than those achieved for the federal individual income tax.
The majority of the more than 87,000 local governments also have authority to levy taxes,
although within constraints established by the law of their states. The real property tax is the
primary tax source for localities – 72.3 percent of total tax revenue nationwide (Census, 2001, 1)
– and the localities usually administer the tax themselves, although within state standards and
with state technical assistance and monitoring.48 This state role is important because (i) state aid
distributions that seek to reduce fiscal disparities among local governments require assurance that
the base has been calculated on a uniform basis, (ii) state controls on property tax rates and debt
are based on the property tax base, (iii) some taxed properties (utilities, pipelines, railroads, etc.)
need to be valued on a systemwide basis if the valuation is to be efficient and equitable, (iv)
valuation of some properties may be so unique and complex that it is unrealistic to expect local
assessors to manage the task, and (v) there may be economies of scale when technical materials,
supplies, and training is provided centrally for all officials. Many localities choose to hire private
mass appraisal firms to do property valuation, thus taking advantage of the technical expertise
and experience of those entities.49
Localities in some states may levy retail sales and income taxes, but these are less likely than the
property tax to be administered independently. When localities do administer the income tax they
47
Tax departments routinely have auditors permanently stationed outside state borders in major business
centers (New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Houston are frequent locations) to audit the largest firms at
their headquarters and to identify unregistered firms that should be paying state taxes.
48
The standard monitoring tool is the sales ratio study, an analysis of the ratio of parcel value from the tax
system to selling prices of recently sold properties. The tests are whether the average ratio is consistent
with the law and whether there are wide disparities in the ratio across property parcels (a failure of
horizontal equity).
49
Evidence has shown local property assessors, even those who are elected to office, appointed assessors,
and contract appraisal companies to all be capable of good quality, i. e., generally uniform, assessments
(Bowman and Mikesell, 1989). The tools necessary for good assessment – maps, models, trained
personnel, information technology, etc. – are easily available where there is political will.
42
have levied, their bases tend to be limited to payrolls plus, sometimes, income of unincorporated
businesses. When states administer local sales taxes, the state and local base typically coincide.
But when local governments collect their own sales taxes, the base of the tax frequently differs
from that of the state tax. That complicates vendor compliance, as does the necessity of duplicate
accounting and reporting to the two administrations. Local enforcement of these income and
sales taxes is seldom as rigorous as state administration, although larger units do typically have
serious delinquency control and audit programs, modern information technology, and personnel
with skills comparable to those of state agency employees.
The decentralized tax administrations do often choose to cooperate, but the cooperation is
voluntary and occurs when both administrations believe they can benefit from the arrangement.
There are several illustrations of this cooperation. First, the federal Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) and the independent state tax departments have information exchange agreements
(accompanied by strong confidentiality safeguards) that provide states with return filing data,
third-party reports (from banks, employers, brokerage firms, etc.), and IRS audit reports.
(Duncan and McLure, 1997, 81 – 82) This information allows states to insure consistency of
filings between federal and state returns, to identify probable non-filers for pursuit, and to pick up
audit results. This exchange constitutes the primary enforcement tool for individual income taxes
in many states and provides important data for independent state corporate income tax audits.
States also now obtain U. S. Customs declaration information to allow them to enforce use tax
obligations on expensive items brought into the U.S. by their residents. (Due and Mikesell 1994)
Experience in the United States -- with state personal and corporate income taxes driven by the
structure of comparable federal taxes – shows the feasibility of closely- linked but separately
administered taxes.50 Indeed, having separate administrations improves the chances that
taxpayers will correctly identify what government has levied the tax; a single, unified
administration thus may reduce transparency and accountability in the tax structure.
Second, IRS and state tax departments collaborate on taxpayer education programs. Because
state income taxes are as a matter of practice – the result of convenience, not of legal requirement
– linked to the federal income tax, in many respects, teaching a taxpayer or tax return preparer to
file one return is to teach that person to file the other. However, the relationship does not extend
to the other major taxes that state and local governments levy because there is no comparable
federal tax.
Third, state tax department staff may enroll in IRS training programs, IRS and state tax
departments jointly develop specialized training programs, and IRS personnel participate in state
tax department training. This sharing of staff training across the basic functions of tax
administration allows considerable cost saving and development of specialized expertise while
maintaining independence of administration.
Cooperative administration can also be horizontal. The state tax departments in the United States,
while entirely independent of each other, do cooperate to improve tax compliance. Forty-four
states plus the District of Columbia are voluntarily associated with the Multistate Tax
Commission, an entity that conducts sales and corporate income tax audits of major corporations
on behalf of the participating states (the individual state must enforce the findings of those
50
The federal individual and corporate income taxes provide a convenient framework on which states may
choose to base their independently-adopted taxes, but the states are not required to harmonize with the
federal tax or with the taxes levied by other states. Convenience for lawmakers, administrators, and
taxpayers, not any legal requirement, has caused virtually all the states to make the link for both individual
and corporate taxes.
43
audits), operates a “nexus discovery” program to identify taxpayers who are not registered with
associated states but should be, and seeks proper determination of state and local tax liability of
multistate taxpayers. In addition, smaller groups of states have regional cooperative agreements
to exchange information, particularly in regard to sales and use taxes. Three northeastern states
offer a mechanism by which a vendor may file a single sales tax return for obligations to all three
states. Other states work bi-laterally on enforcement projects.
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APPENDIX THREE : FISCAL AUTONOMY AND ADMINISTRATIVE ASSIGNMENTS IN NIGERIA
The Nigerian federation includes three levels of government: the federal government, 36 states
(plus the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja), and local authorities. Much of the revenue received
by subnational governments comes from shared national taxes, but federal law does assign
particular taxes to each level of government. Subnational governments have less direct discretion
over taxes bases and structures than they have over administration.
Federal Taxes: The primary sources assigned to Federal Government include the companies
income tax, the value added tax, and oil revenue. A significant amount of this revenue is,
however, transferred by formula to state and local authorities. The company income tax, customs
duties and excises, the tax on petroleum products, and most oil revenues are collected into a
Federation Account for distribution between the federal government, state governments, local
governments, and special funds; allocation of state and local shares is by formula. The value
added tax is also shared between levels of government; the subnational share is allocated partly
by formula and partly according to its derivation.
State and Local Taxes: State and local governments collect what are called Internally Generated
Revenues. Some of this revenue comes from taxes adopted by federal law, including the personal
income tax, stamp duties, and capital gains taxes. For these taxes, the federal law does not give
states the ability to determine the base or the rate of the tax. State legislatures may adopt some
other minor taxes if they choose to do so (the road tax, business registration fees, leases of state
lands, etc.). Income taxes on the military, national police, and certain other groups are collected
by the national government for federal use. State internal revenue services sometimes contract
out certain functions to private collection firms.
Local authorities are authorized to collect only minor taxes; the state legislature or local
legislative councils may define the base and rate for many of these. Revenue sources include
licenses on television and wireless radio, market and trading licenses and fees, car park duties,
and advertising fees; in practice, only market and trading licenses and fees are meaningfully
exploited by local governments (Akindele et al, 2002, 565).
Tax Administration: The Federal Inland Revenue Service collects the national taxes, including
the federal, state, and local shares. The states collect their taxes, including those adopted by
federal law, with their own State Board of Internal Revenue. Local Government Revenue
Committees administer the minor revenue sources assigned to the local authorities. Since 1998,
each state has had a Joint State Revenue Committee that includes the chair of the state service and
the chairs of the local revenue committees; the committee is responsible for harmonizing taxation
within the state. The 1993 personal income tax decree established a Joint Tax Board that includes
chair of the Federal Inland Revenue Service and a member from each of the states. Among its
functions are to deal with double taxation issues and to promote uniformity in the application of
the personal income tax across the states. (International Monetary Fund, 2001)
The subnational units frequently lack adequate systems to track collections, master lists of
taxpayers, and adequate staff. While they can track companies through the national VAT
registration numbers, they have no identification number system for individuals. (Alm and Boex
2002)
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In contrast to most other international experience, this system gives subnational governments
considerable autonomy in administering their taxes while limiting their autonomy in regard to the
basic structure of their taxes. For the states, their tax policy discretion is solely in regard to how
they administer their taxes that have been adopted by the national government. In this
environment, the only difference in tax effort across subnational units can come through
differences in administrative vigor, not thorough the more transparent variation in tax base or
rate.