Tax Expenditure Reporting and Domestic Revenue Mobilization in Africa

The use of tax expenditures (TEs) is an important fiscal practice that is often overlooked in public spending debates. The fiscal cost as well as the lack of effectiveness of TEs can be significant. This chapter describes the state of TE reporting across the world, focusing on Africa. It begins by explaining in detail what TEs are and what their role in government expenditure is. It proceeds by offering examples of the fiscal cost of these provisions, their (in)effectiveness, and the reasons why they are often hard to remove. The main portion of the chapter focuses on the lack and inconsistency of TE reporting. The chapter provides the first results of the “Global Tax Expenditures Database” (GTED), an ongoing project aiming to increase transparency and boost research in the TE field. The GTED reveals that over 64% of African countries do not provide any information on their TEs, while most of the countries that do report on TEs leave out important information such as the policy objectives and beneficiaries of those provisions. Lastly, using the available data, the chapter reports that, on average, TEs in African countries account for 2.8% of GDP and 17.8% of total tax revenue, and being as high as 7.8% (in Senegal) and 58.4% (in Mauritania), respectively.

When public spending goes local: agricultural expenditure at a key stage in Ghana’s decentralisation reform

This paper provides a qualitative analysis that highlights the implications on agricultural services of a key stage in decentralisation reforms in Ghana. We assess the status of agricultural expenditure decentralisation and draw out the likely implications for agricultural service delivery and national strategies. The study finds that agricultural officers at all levels (national, regional and district) had concerns about the implementation of the new decentralisation reform. These included budget cuts and delays in releases that coincided with the reform period; the transfer of staff from the civil service to the local government service; and a sense that agriculture may receive less attention when allocation of government resources becomes the preserve of assemblies and district chief executives, rather than the central agricultural ministry. The structural changes also meant that agricultural local government staff now needed to learn to ‘market’ the value of their public services to local government leadership, in order to protect resources for agriculture. The decentralisation reform also necessitated new public expenditure reporting practices to ensure a clear overview of sectoral spending across government tiers.

Perancangan Sistem Informasi Akuntansi Pendapatan Pada Arkan Graha Berbasis Web Menggunakan Php Dan Mysql

Arkan Graha are addressed in jl. Cisaranten kulon III No.14A Arcamanik Bandung 40293 (022 87882775). Arkan Graha requires a good income information systems to handle various problems in the company, which include the income or expenditure reporting services that still use ms.excel and performed by one person, doing so in the company's earnings report to be less effective. To these problems, the writer took the title " Design Of Revenue Accounting Information System Web based At Arkan Graha Using PHP and MYSQL”. The research design used is primary or secondary research design, the type of data is qualitative data and quantitative data, the type of research used is academic research, data collection techniques that I use are field studies consisting of interviews and observation and literature, research methods using descriptive research methods and survey methods. System development methods use methodologies oriented to processes, outputs, and data, the development structure used is Waterfall

Towards enhancing tax abatement transparency: Reviewing the promises and limitations of GASB 77

In August 2015, the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) adopted Statement 77, requiring government disclosure in audited financial reports of a particular type of tax expenditure, tax abatements. GASB's reporting standards move tax abatements from a budgetary environment to an accounting environment. This paper evaluates GASB 77's provisions to encourage an early and on-going dialogue about the Statement's prospects for achieving greater transparency compared to existing tax expenditure reporting efforts. We conclude that GASB 77 will be most beneficial to consumers of financial information in medium and large jurisdictions where there is no alternative tax abatement disclosure platform, or where the alternative offers less transparency than what can be achieved through financial reporting.