Tax Systems and Tax Reforms in Latin America

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of tax systems and tax reforms in a number of Latin American countries since the early 1990’s, including Argentina and Brazil, Costa Rica and Mexico, Paraguay, Colombia, Chile and Uruguay.

The authors present and discuss tax systems from a broad quantitative and historical perspective and describe the main taxes existing in each country, presenting the details of their institutional features. The existing interactions between the economic structure, the corporate tax system and the attraction of FDI inflows are of paramount importance and these issues are deeply analyzed in the book. A characteristic trait of the area is the proliferation of tax havens, particularly located in the Caribbean and in some other small islands, and the book provides an analysis of these havens and the counteractions adopted by the OECD countries. Finally, the book investigates the political economy of Latin America’s taxation, exploring why many of these countries have experienced a democratic transition but poor economic performances.

Luigi Bernardi is Professor of Public Finance at the University of Pavia, Italy.

Alberto Barreix is Senior Fiscal Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank.

Anna Marenzi is Associate Professor of Public Economics at the Universita degli Studi dell’Insubria, Varese, Italy

Paola Profeta is Associate Professor of Public Economics, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy.