拉丁美洲经济委员会-评估税收支出：概念框架和国际经验（英）-2023-41页_725kb

Summary of Tax Expenditure Evaluation Report

The report addresses tax expenditures (TEs) as tools for advancing public policy objectives, such as boosting economic growth, employment, and sustainability, but emphasizes the need for systematic evaluation to ensure efficiency and alignment with fiscal goals. TEs, which represent forgone revenue due to tax breaks, can generate significant revenue losses, with Latin America and the Caribbean averaging around 4.3% of GDP in forgone revenue between 1990 and 2020.

The tax expenditure policy cycle encompasses key stages: setting up TEs, their operation and management, reporting, and evaluation. Ex-ante assessments focus on justifying new provisions by analyzing policy relevance, fiscal costs, and feasibility, while ex-post evaluations assess real-world impacts, including effectiveness and side effects. International evidence shows that evaluations are often incomplete or infrequent, with only a minority of countries like Canada, the Netherlands, and Korea having comprehensive frameworks.

Evaluations must account for causality, using methods such as regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, and propensity score matching to address endogeneity issues. Challenges include political economy factors and data limitations, with evaluations rarely leading to policy reforms even when negative impacts are identified.

Globally, only about 16 of 106 reporting countries incorporate evaluation results, and the situation is similar in Latin America and the Caribbean. Best practices include Canada's gender-based analysis, the Netherlands' robust oversight by an independent audit body, and Korea's structured evaluation process. The report concludes that rationalizing TEs requires regular, integrated evaluation frameworks that link ex-ante and ex-post assessments, enhancing transparency and policy coherence. Governments should prioritize this to improve domestic resource mobilization and align with long-term development strategies.