The Proposed Transformation of the Local Government Revenue System in Tanzania

Jameson Boex and Jorge Martinez-Vazquez ()
Additional contact information
Jameson Boex: Georgia State University

Chapter 5 in Local Government Finance Reform in Developing Countries, 2006, pp 91-108 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Chapter 4 assesses the current local government revenue system in Tanzania and identifies a number of far-reaching shortcomings in the revenue sources assigned to the local government level as well as the broader framework for local government revenue collections. This assessment led to the conclusion that the traditionally “permissive” (open-list) approach to local taxation in Tanzania resulted in a system that virtually lacks any sense of uniformity. Furthermore, (1) local governments are mostly assigned low-yielding taxes; (2) fragmentation of the local tax system causes horizontal inequities and inefficiency; (3) the benefit principle is largely missing as a conceptual foundation for local government revenues; (4) there is an excessive focus on the redistributive impact of local revenues; (5) local revenues are hard to administer and hard to enforce; (6) compliance costs for local taxes are high, and (7) local governments are assigned the least popular and politically acceptable revenue sources. Addressing these problems goes well beyond assisting individual local governments in improving their tax structures and strengthening local tax administrations in a bottom-up fashion. Instead, resolving these shortcomings will demand a comprehensive transformation of the local revenue system.

Keywords: Local Government; Land Rent; Revenue Source; Local Revenue; Horizontal Inequity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59949-9_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230599499

DOI: 10.1057/9780230599499_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().