Coordinating Tariff Reduction and Domestic Tax Reform

Download or read book Coordinating Tariff Reduction and Domestic Tax Reform written by Mr.Michael Keen and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1999-07-01 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A key obstacle to fundamental tariff reform in many developing countries is the revenue loss that it ultimately implies. This paper establishes a simple and practicable strategy for realizing the efficiency gains from tariff reform without reducing public revenues, showing that for a small open economy, a cut in tariffs combined with a point-for-point increase in domestic consumption taxes increases both welfare and public revenues. Increasingly stringent conditions are required, however, to ensure unambiguously beneficial outcomes from this reform strategy when allowance is made for such important features as nontradeable goods, intermediate inputs, and imperfect competition.