Financing Subnational Governments with Decentralized Taxes

Abstract

This paper is about the case for assigning taxing powers to subnational governments, and about the structure of this revenue assignment. As Musgrave (1983) put it in perhaps the seminal paper on this subject, “Who Should Tax, Where and What”? This review reconsiders the Musgrave questions after 25 years, asks whether the international trend in tax assignment is in step with what economists have prescribed, and concludes with some thoughts about the most likely future for the decentralization of tax systems.