Administrative Dimensions of Tax Reform

The best tax policy in the world is worth little if it cannot be implemented effectively. Tax policy design in developing countries must therefore take the administrative dimension of taxation carefully into account. What can be done may to a considerable extent determine what is done in any country. This paper discusses the relationship between tax policy and tax administration. When can policy lead administration? When must policy initiatives wait on administrative reform? How exactly can both sides of the policy and administrative agenda be advanced together? The paper sets out the broad outlines of administrative reform -- the essential conditions for such reform, its principal components, and its limits as a way of solving critical tax problems and provides a short case study of the interaction of tax policy and tax administration in the Polish Tax reform of the early 1990s.