Reducing Inequality in Latin America

This book examines the role of tax policy in the incidence of socio-economic inequality. With a focus on Latin American, the author demonstrates that while inequality has decreased remarkably in the 2000s - during the very period in which inequality was increasing almost everywhere else in the world - this reduction cannot be attributed to a better use of tax policy. Offering both quantitative and qualitative reviews of tax policies pursued by Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru over the last two decades, the book contends that these countries continue to make insufficient use of taxation measures in combating startlingly high levels of inequality. Drawing on legal texts, interviews with researchers and experts in the field, and official monetary statistics to obtain a complete picture of how discretionary tax policy has been pursued in the region, this volume engages with a range of recent economic theories to argue for the importance of using the tax system to reduce inequalities, whilst also offering new methods for measuring tax policy in subsequent research.