Revenue Forecasting and Tax Policy Analysis
“Revenue Forecasting and Tax Policy Analysis” has been the fourth regional learning initiative delivered under the IMF's “Strengthening Economic Governance and Public Financial Management” program funded by the EU.
Accurate forecasts of tax revenue are vital for the formulation of fiscal policy. Policy decisions must also be framed in the context of medium-term sustainability making multi-year projections of revenue and accurate assessment of tax policy measures a further necessity. This workshop aims to give participants a greater understanding of modeling techniques and tools for deriving revenue forecasts, analyzing the revenue and distributional impacts of tax policy changes, and addressing behavioral effects. After this workshop, participants are able to better integrate revenue forecasting models into their annual budgetary processes, which should contribute to the adoption of sustainable medium-term fiscal strategies.
Learning Objectives
The objectives of this workshop have been to:
- provide an international and regional overview of revenue forecasting practices for personal income and corporate taxes as well as value added taxes
- demonstrate how various modelling approaches are used to address revenue forecasting and tax policy analysis questions, including the use of basic input-output models, DSGE models and micro-simulation model
- discuss the important distributional impacts of tax of tax reform
- assess how tax policy changes may impact investment behavior, the behavior of individual taxpayers and ultimately economic activity
Target audience
As we have been addressing the role and cooperation of ministries of finance and revenue administrations (tax and customs) on budget forecasting and tax policy formulation, we welcomed policy analysts of those institutions.
Contributions from participants
The lectures have been complemented with in-class exercises. During the workshop, the participants shared the practice of the revenue/tax analysis process in their respective countries.
FACULTY
SELCUK CANER, Senior Economist, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
Selcuk Caner is senior economist in the Tax Policy Division of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the International Monetary. Before joining the Fund, he was an associate professor of finance at Yeditepe University and Bilkent University in Turkey. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Pretoria in South Africa where he teaches regularly at the Department of Economics and the African Tax Institute (ATI). He was a visiting professor in Russian New Economic School and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow from 1998 to 1999 and in 2005. In addition to his academic appointments, he has been a tax policy advisor in the Russian Federation appointed by the U.S. Treasury Department from 1997 to 1999. He was also the U.S. Treasury Department’s banking advisor to the Deposit Insurance Agency of the Russian Federation from 2004 to 2005. He has also worked in several former Soviet Union countries including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic and Azerbaijan on tax policy and trade issues as a consultant. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the State University of New York.
Over the years he has lectured on tax policy analysis and revenue forecasting in various international forums and institutions. He has written numerous reports on various tax issues and published in international journals on financial markets and banking.
W. STEVEN CLARK, Technical Assistance Advisor, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
W. Steven Clark is a Technical Assistance Advisor in the Tax Policy Division of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department. Mr. Clark is on secondment to the IMF from the OECD (as of March 2014), where he was Head of the Corporate Tax Unit of the Tax Policy and Statistics Division of the Centre for Tax Policy and Administration (CTPA). Before joining the OECD in 1997, Mr. Clark was a tax policy economist with the Tax Policy Branch of the Canadian Department of Finance. Mr. Clark holds a PhD in Economics from Queen’s University, Canada, with a specialization in public finance, taxation and investment.
RUSSEL S. KRELOVE, Senior Economist, Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
Russell S. Krelove, a Canadian national, Mr. Krelove is a senior economist in the Tax Policy Division of the Fiscal Affairs Department. An economist by training, he taught at the University of Toronto and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver before joining the IMF. He has provided tax policy advice to over 70 countries in all regions of the world, including the Balkans, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, FYR of Macedonia, Slovenia, and most recently, Albania.
Partners
This IMF/CEF activity has been financed with EU support under the program Strengthening Economic Governance and Public Financial Management, which supports fiscal reforms of the IPA beneficiaries in the Western Balkan. Complementary financial support has been provided by the Ministry of Finance of Slovenia.
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