NAFTA and Mexico's Tax Policy Reform

Jorge Martinez-Vazquez () and Duanje Chen

International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU from International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University

Abstract: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has had a significant effect on Mexico’s economy and institutions. The ongoing consideration of tax reform in Mexico requires an evaluation of the role of NAFTA in Mexico’s economy, including its tax structure; it also requires an assessment of the impact of the Mexico’s tax system on the trade and capital flows between Mexico and its NAFTA partners, the United States and Canada. Clearly, no good tax reform in Mexico can ignore the role of NAFTA.This paper provides a review of the evidence on the economic impact of NAFTA, focusing on the evolution of foreign trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows in Mexico, and how these changes have affected Mexico’s tax structure in terms of its tax bases and the ability to raise tax revenues. Using the marginal effective tax rate analysis, it also compares Mexico’s tax system with those of Canada and the U.S. in terms of the tax impact on FDI across the three countries.Two main findings can be drawn from this study. First, by fueling Mexico’s export and FDI inflow, NAFTA has a profound impact on Mexico’s economic structure and hence the industrial distribution of tax bases. This transformation, in turn, calls for the adaptation of the tax structure to a service and manufacturing-export oriented economy. And, second, there are no weighty reasons from a NAFTA perspective for Mexico to undertake fundamental changes in its tax structure. The new wave of tax reform should concentrate on the objectives of raising revenues, simplifying the tax structure, and increasing the efficiency and overall equity of the tax system.

Keywords: NAFTA; Mexico; Tax Policy Reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 61 pages
Date: 2001-01-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://icepp.gsu.edu/files/2015/03/ispwp0102.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ays:ispwps:paper0102

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU from International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Paul Benson ().