ABSTRACT
During the past decade, or so, diverse countries have introduced radical reforms in the way their fiscal bureaucracies conduct one of the most pressing national tasks: the collection of taxes (Jenkins 1994; Taliercio 2000). The reform, an early version of which originated in the developing world in Bolivia and Ghana in the late 1980s, has now been adopted by more than fifteen countries, including Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Bolivia, Guatemala, Guyana, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. More precisely, there is a pattern in each of these countries in that the traditional line departments (income tax, value-added tax, and sometimes customs) are being separated from the ministry of finance (MOF) and granted the legal status of semi-autonomous authorities. These semi-autonomous revenue authorities (ARAs) are designed with a number of autonomy-enhancing features, including self-financing mechanisms, boards of directors with high ranking public and private sector representatives, and sui generis personnel systems.
