1 - Introduction

Summary

Recent decades have seen large tax increases in Latin America. The conventional wisdom that Latin American tax systems generate too little revenue seems harder to sustain today than in the past. What continues to be striking about the region’s tax burdens, however, is the great disparity between them. This book sheds light on this question through a comparison of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. It argues that tax burden variance reflects the impact of historical episodes of redistribution that threatened private property. Where they occurred, such episodes impeded future taxation by prompting economic elites and social conservatives to organize to defend their interests, thus forging strong, enduring anti-statist blocs. These blocs hindered taxation both directly, by combatting efforts to boost revenue, and indirectly, by undermining statist actors, especially labor unions. This introductory chapter consists of five sections: the first provides an overview of Latin American tax systems, the second reviews the scholarship on tax burden determinants, the third sketches the book’s argument, the fourth explains the research design and the fifth describes subsequent chapters.