Measuring Tax Administration Effectiveness and its Impact on Tax Revenue

Abstract

This paper proposes a method for constructing a tax administration measure of effectiveness or TAME, and describes its desirable properties. TAME was empirically constructed using data from external audits of value-added tax administrations of India’s state governments. TAME was used to quantitatively assess the impact of tax administration effectiveness on tax revenues. The impact was found to be both statistically significant and large. The causes of tax administration effectiveness in the poorly performing states were then identified. Finally, this paper suggests guidelines for constructing TAMEs for other jurisdictions and time periods