An autonomous research institute under the Ministry of Finance

 

IIPF Congress, Tokyo, August 18, 2017

 

Dr. Sacchidananda Mukherjee, NIPFP faculty has attended the 73rd Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance  held in Tokyo, Japan, from August 18 - 20, 2017. The Scientific Committee of IIPF 2017 was chaired by Wojciech Kopczuk (Columbia University, USA) and Andreas Peichl (IFO Institute and LMU Munich, Germany – as from 1 June, 2017). The theme of the Meeting was “Fiscal Reform". The link to the conference website is http://www.iipf2017.jp/. Dr Mukherjee has chaired a session titled "G03: tax Collection in developing countries". He has also presented a paper on Efficiency in Value Added Tax (VAT) Collection across Indian States: Panel Stochastic Frontier Analysis

 
The abstract is as follows: Growing demand for public expenditures, limitations in expanding fiscal space, limited scope to deviate from common harmonized tax system under the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, may induce Indian states to look for opportunities to expand revenue mobilization through alternative channels. An assessment of the existing tax efficiency and strengthening tax administration could be one of such alternatives. There are a number of papers which estimate tax effort of Indian states. Taking this exercise to the next level, this paper focuses on measuring tax effort and identifying factors that explain variations in the tax effort. In measuring tax potential, an attempt is made to differentiate between factors that determine the tax base and factors that constrain the state from utilizing the available base. The exercise looks at comprehensive revenue collection under Value Added Tax of general category states for the period 2001-14.
 
Dr Mukherjee was discussant of paper titled Growth Dynamics of Value Added Tax Revenue in Low Income Countries: The Case of Ghana by Francis Kwaw Andoh, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania/University of Cape Coast Ghana, Tanzania.