El esfuerzo fiscal en los países de América Latina y el Caribe

Abstract

In Latin America, tax revenue has increased in the last fifteen years; nevertheless, the prevailing levels of inequality and poverty lead to the question of whether these countries can increase tax revenues even more, in order to be able to genuinely finance public expenditure levels that are necessary to restrain them. Using fiscal effort as metodology, this article presents estimations that allow concluding that countries with lower levels of development have a lower capacity to generate fiscal resources, while countries with medium or high levels of development could be able to increase their tax collection, but due to political and institutional reasons they have decided to maintain low tax rates.