A concept and typology of tax reform for Latin America

Abstract There is still no consolidated definition of tax reform in the public finance literature. This article proposes to present its own concept of tax reform. Together with the definition of tax reform the text presents a typology for the classification of these reforms. In order to apply the proposed concept and typology, a database of tax changes and reforms was built for Latin American countries between 1990 and 2004 with data from the Inter-American Development Bank. It was found that the tax reforms promoted in Latin America were characterized by focusing on relevant taxes on consumption and income, in order to raise revenue, and were implemented in a gradual manner and with overall incidence. The Latin American experience can be useful for Brazil, which for years has been trying to reform its tax system. Thus, gradual reforms, directed toward taxes of widespread incidence seem to have more chance of approval by the legislative body.摘要：公共财政学界目前尚未形成关于税收改革的统一定义。本文提出自身的税收改革概念，并结合该定义构建了用于归类此类改革的类型学体系。为应用本文提出的概念与类型学体系，本文依托泛美开发银行（Inter-American Development Bank）的公开数据，搭建了1990年至2004年间拉美国家的税收变动与改革数据库。研究结果显示，拉美地区推行的税收改革具有如下特征：以消费税与所得税等核心税种为改革重点以筹集财政收入，采用渐进式实施路径，且覆盖广泛的课税范围。拉美税收改革经验对巴西颇具借鉴意义——巴西多年来始终致力于推进本国税制改革。由此可见，以广泛课征税种为改革导向的渐进式方案，更易获得立法机构的审议通过。