Agenda (as at 2 August 2006)

Discussion Theme Topics

1) International enforcement

The past decades have witnessed an unprecedented liberalisation and globalisation of national economies. Countries have increasingly removed or limited controls on foreign investment and relaxed or eliminated foreign exchange controls. At the same time progress in information and telecommunication technology has made the world a smaller place. As a result businesses and private taxpayers, particularly high-wealth taxpayers, increasingly operate in a borderless world. 

While businesses and private taxpayers increasingly go global, the activities of revenue bodies remain largely confined to their respective jurisdictions. The exercise of sovereign powers, including taxing powers, is generally limited to persons or events within a jurisdiction’s territory and any country might only see a small part of the overall activities or investments of a given taxpayer.  However, revenue bodies are obligated to uphold and enforce their countries’ tax laws and in order to discharge their obligations they rely increasingly on improved and broadened co-operation with other countries.

A background paper on this topic prepared by the OECD Secretariat was forwarded to delegates in early-August 2006.

The Forum meeting will provide an opportunity for heads of delegations to discuss, in breakout session format, individual country responses to this challenge, and their impacts and experiences.  The discussion in plenary will aim to summarize the key challenges and issues and ideas for making greater inroads to this non-compliance.

2) Organizational developments and reforms

Within their respective public sectors, national revenue bodies strive to attain two important and complementary objectives: 1) to establish a well-functioning tax administration system—one that is efficient, effective, and provides high standards of service to taxpayers and other stakeholders; and 2) to provide government with much of the revenues it requires to fund community services.

Revenue bodies face a range of external and internal forces or drivers for change that must be properly incorporated into their business planning activities. Changes in tax policy, mandates from government for improved revenue collection and/or to reductions in the regulatory burden on business and citizens, globalization impacts, advances in technology, and newly-emerging approaches for the delivery of government services represent some of the externally-driven forces for reform that revenue bodies must confront. From an internal perspective, a revenue body’s management will have its own ideas and change agenda for improving overall organizational performance. Integrating all of these forces for change into a coherent and achievable reform effort is one of the key challenges for heads of revenue bodies and their senior staff and, as experience shows, sometimes runs into difficulties.

The format for the meeting provides for two country presentations on this topic followed by discussion in plenary format. The presentations will enable the revenue agencies concerned to showcase current key reform efforts that are intended to reshape the way revenue administrative functions are conducted in their respective countries and in the process contribute to significant improvements in the operation of the tax system. Presenters will reflect on the objectives of these reform efforts, the key issues and challenges being confronted, critical factors that are shaping the reform effort activities, and the progress being achieved.

Thursday, 14 September 2006

Friday, 15 September 2006