Public spending plays a key role in the economic growth and development of most developing economies. This book analyzes revenues, policy, and administration of Domestic Resource Mobilization (DRM) in developing countries. It provides a broad landscape of practical examples, drawing from lessons learned in World Bank operations across Global Practices over the past several decades. It should be thought of as a starting point for a more comprehensive research agenda rather than a complete inventory itself. This book reviews the trends in tax revenue collection in developing countries. It provides an overview of efforts to close the revenue gap, many of which have been supported by World Bank operations. The book reviews the special challenges facing low income countries, which have traditionally relied on indirect revenues in the context of limited formalization of their economies. An overview of tax policy and administration reform programs is presented, with an overview of outstanding issues that will shape the policy agenda in years ahead.

This report shows why Southeast Asian countries need to consider tax reforms after many struggled to finance massive public expenditure programs to combat COVID-19. The second in a four-part series, the report considers the impact of COVID-19 on Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand to lay out steps policymakers can take to create healthier fiscal spaces. It illustrates challenges faced around informality, tax collection, compliance, and progressivity. It emphasizes how preventing fraud, taxing wealth, and introducing environmental levies can help reduce poverty, tackle inequality, and contribute toward more sustainable growth. It is therefore crucial to understand the required policy responses as well as potential technologies that could help expand the tax base, increase tax compliance, and ease the process of paying taxes.

At a time when the development community is grappling with the challenge of raising the required investment—estimated in the trillions of dollars—for attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), countries’ mobilization of their own fiscal revenues is receiving increasing attention. This edited volume discusses the political and institutional contexts that enable poor countries to mobilize domestic resources for global commitments and national development priorities. It examines the processes and mechanisms that connect the politics of resource mobilization and demands for social provision; changes in state-citizen, state-business and donor-recipient relations associated with resource mobilization and allocation; and governance reforms that can lead to improved and sustainable public revenues and services. The volume is unique in putting a spotlight on the political drivers of domestic resource mobilization in a rapidly changing global environment and in different country contexts in Latin America, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. It will appeal to a broad academic audience in the fields of economics, development studies and social policy, as well as practitioners, activists and policy makers.