The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has set out an ambitious agenda for the world community. Several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognize specifically the challenge to raise domestic revenue in order to finance public spending in a sustainable manner and ultimately combat poverty and inequality. These challenges are particularly salient for developing countries.
The planned outputs of the project are: (i) a body of high quality, policy relevant research and analysis; (ii) strengthened capacity of researchers and technical government officers in LICs and MICs to undertake research and policy analysis related to DRM; and (iii) tailored knowledge products from the DRM programme for diverse groups, communicated through the right channels, plus strengthened partnerships and knowledge networks to connect research and policy for action at multiple scales.
Jointly, the effects of these three pillars are enhanced capacity of the three programme target audiences (policy-makers, development partners, and researchers) to analyse, design, and implement multiple aspects of policies around the themes of DRM. From this, it is expected that governments and local actors will adopt, implement, and strengthen policies, practices and institutions to promote socially inclusive growth and development in line with their development path. Ultimately, this should result in improved tax systems, strengthened domestic capacity for revenue collection, and increased tax revenues in developing countries.
This project aims to achieve these objectives through a work programme on DRM covering six thematic workstreams:
1. Enterprises, livelihoods, and compliance
2. SOUTHMOD - modelling taxes and social protection and their incidence
3. International tax and illicit financial flows
4. Institutions and institutional design
5. Extractives
6. Domestic financing
Across themes the activities proposed shall ultimately provide new insights and tools for policy makers, and foster debate within academia and between academia and policy makers. Capacity-building and empowering researchers in developing countries is a common thread to all themes.
