Reinventing VAT collection : industry vertical assessment, revenue increase, and public sector reliability

This dissertation shows how administrative reforms of the State Tax Administration Bureaus (STABs) in Brazil between 1997 and 2005 contributed to strengthening public sector bureaucracies and institutions at the sub-national level, while increasing tax revenues and compliance. STABs' administrative reform comprised changes in organizational structure (i.e. rationalization of procedures and processes), technological processes (i.e. computerization and on-line processes), and institutional arrangements (i.e. development of public-private sector relationships to improve tax collection and tax collector professionalization). Beyond the market-oriented reforms, these joint changes made possible to taxpayers and tax collectors to visualize the connections and functioning of the tax administration and collection process that they were not able to think about before, i.e., there is evidence for how the administrative reform facilitated the understanding of the links among the several processes in the tax collection, particularly the backward and forward linkages in each industry. The understanding of these linkages advanced a conceptual shift and the adoption of a new cognitive axis-the industry linkages that changed the way tax collectors envisioned the tax collection process. This dissertation shows that understanding these new connections led to increased efficiency, effectiveness, accountability, and transparency, providing faster and more accurate information on taxpayers and tax returns. In addition, I show that in the case of tax administration reforms in the Brazilian STABs the conjunction of tailored organizational and technological changes influenced tax collectors' and taxpayers' compliance, cooperation, and adhesion to reform efforts.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Pinhanez, Monica F. (Monica Fornitani)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alice Amsden.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42417

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/42417