The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought enormous political, economic, and social challenges. Since 1991 fiscal reform has been a pillar of Russia's reform agenda. This book analyzes the effort to adopt a modern tax code where previously there were few recognizable taxes, establish an efficient tax administration where taxpayers had never paid taxes directly, and decentralize the system of governance where power had been centralized and dictatorial. Despite the remarkable achievements, many old and new challenges remain. The authors bring an analytical approach to fiscal reform in Russia, providing a detailed analysis of the tax system and estimates of tax compliance and evasion. The book offers a careful examination of the fiscal architecture of Russia and concludes with a presentation of remaining reform needs and options for Russia. Based on Russia's reform experience, the authors also draw lessons for fiscal reform in other developing and transitional countries. Given the dynamic nature of Russia's economic development, this book will prove a timely and informative resource for academics in economics, public finance, political science and public administration as well as for policy makers. Its lessons will also be useful for officials involved with finance in transition and developing countries.

Russia dramatically reduced its higher rates of personal income tax (PIT) in 2001 establishing a single marginal rate at the low level of 13 percent. In the following year, real revenue from the PIT actually increased by about 26 percent. This 'flat tax' experience has attracted much attention (and emulation) among policymakers, making it perhaps the most important tax reform of recent years. But it has been little studied. This paper asks whether the strong revenue performance of the PIT was itself a consequence of this reform, using both macro evidence and, in particular, micro-level data on the experiences of individuals and households affected by the reform to varying degrees. It concludes that there is no evidence of a strong supply side effect of the reform. Compliance, however, did improve quite substantially-by about one third according to our estimates-though it remains unclear whether this was due to the parametric reforms or to accompanying changes in enforcement.

Starting in the early 1990s, the Baltics, Russia, and other (BRO) countries of the former Soviet Union initiated tax reforms that varied widely at the later stages. Recently, some of the BRO countries, basing decisions on the proposition that lowering of the top marginal income tax rate would significantly benefit economic development and increase tax compliance, have initiated a new stage of tax reforms. This paper reviews country experiences and suggests that (i) overall, there seems to be little evidence of a substantial improvement in income tax revenues resulting simply from a reduction in the top marginal tax rates, and (ii) in the BRO countries, the elasticity of the behavior of economic agents, in terms of labor supply, saving, and investment, with respect to income tax rates is not large, and a reduction of the existing income tax rates is unlikely to lead to a notable expansion of economic activity.

IMF, revenue, tax policy, tax rate, value added tax.