Overview

Various reasons exist why revenues are forecasted in the first place. Tax revenue forecasting plays a central role in annual budget formulation. It provides policy makers and fiscal planners with the data needed to guide borrowing, use accumulated reserves, or specify monetary measures to balance the budget. It also informs what fiscal actions are sustainable and hence how to balance fiscal policy to address the problems in the balance of payments and hence foreign debt.  (1) First, the budgeting process requires a realistic path of revenues for planning purposes and ascertaining the available resource envelop which can later be distributed to the various expenditure items. (2) Revenue forecasts also provide an assessment of the extent to which the government can borrow and later on its ability to repay in a given fiscal year. (3) Revenue forecasts are also important in managing the cashflows of government–to ascertain the amount of expected resources before taking expenditure decisions.

Objectives of the course

• Introduction to tax analysis
• Basic econometrics for tax forecasting
• Tax analysis using input-output / Social Accounting Matrices
• Corporate Tax Micro simulation module
• Income Tax Micro simulation module
• Value added tax Micro simulation module
• Excise Tax Microsimulation module

Tariffs analysis using SAMs