Tax Reforms in Zimbabwe free essay sample

This study applies the concepts of elasticity and buoyancy to determine whether tax reforms in Zimbabwe achieved these objectives. Elasticities and buoyancies are computed for the pre-reform period as well as the post-reform period. Evidence suggests that reforms had a positive impact on the overall tax structure and on the individual tax handles. In fact, the elasticity of indirect taxes was low and that of direct taxes was high, especially after the reforms. Despite this positive impact, the reforms failed to make VAT responsive to changes in income, although VAT was predominant in the tax structure. This was mainly aimed at reducing Government expenditures, particularly the recurrent expenditures, and redirecting resources to the productive sector. As a result the budget deficit was targeted to reach 5% of GDP by 1994/95 from a level of about 10 % of GDP, that is by end of the first phase of the reform programme. Reform the tax system to improve quality and resource allocation; Targeting to reduce the tax ratio from 35% of GDP to about 33% by the end of the reform period; Introduce cost forms, a case of Zimbabwe recovery measures to boost non-tax revenues; Removal of subsidies, which stood at 3. We will write a custom essay sample on Tax Reforms in Zimbabwe or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page % of GDP in1990/91; Reduction of the civil service wage bill from 16. 5% of GDP to 12. 9% by 1994/95; Allocate some resources to civil servants made redundant, the poor and the unemployed. In the literature tax reform includes key issues as: †¢ Dispersion of tax rates; †¢ De-emphasizing steeply progressive tax rate structure; †¢ Reducing the tax burden of export and import sectors; and †¢ Strengthening tax administration. The trend in total revenue to GDP in Zimbabwe remained almost constant at levels around 27% of GDP. The research question will then be why the revenues remained constant throughout the reform period. One hypothesis could be an indication that the tax reforms which took place – if there were any at all did not have an impact on revenue performance or this could be traced to delays in implementing improved tax administration measures. The research will have to establish this. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM Despite close to a decade of economic reforms in Zimbabwe, the result has been further decline in economic performance. This lack of response to macroeconomic adjustment policies pointed to a need to revisit the more realistic, but much neglected socio-cultural, political and other institutional factors as possible explanatory variables of this observed poor performance. It is our contention, therefore, that it is not only economic factors, but also a host of other complex historical, political and socio-cultural determined factors that continue to impede the success of the economic reforms in Zimbabwe. A clear understanding of the role played by these factors in determining the reform outcomes in Zimbabwe is very important. JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY Knowing and understanding the key political and socio-cultural constraints to economic reforms in Zimbabwe can be of great importance for re-designing economic reform policy and its ultimate implementation. This can be done, for example, through drafting all-inclusive participatory policy reform interventions that reduce the severity of the identified po litical and cultural constraints and related impediments to undertaking meaningful economic reforms in Zimbabwe. In other words a deeper understanding of the political, institutional and socio-cultural factors that determine the success or failure of economic reforms in Zimbabwe is of vital importance for policy-making reasons, hence the need to undertake this study. 7 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES The general objective of the research project is to increase the body of knowledge for the design and implementation of future reforms in Zimbabwe, including lessons that can be learnt from the failed past reform efforts. The specific objectives of this research, however, are: †¢ To provide analysis and evidence of reasons for the failure of reform efforts in Zimbabwe to provide analysis and evidence or no evidence of the role of stakeholders in the design, implementation and outcomes of the reform programmes in Zimbabwe, as well as methods used to consult and ensure or not to ensure their participation in the reform process; †¢ To assess the social costs and benefits of the reform process and to identify who the potential losers were or those who shouldered the burden of adjustment; †¢ To increase the domestic capacity to undertake research related to major economic and political reform in Zimbabwe; and †¢ To derive some policy implications based on the findings of this research that will find their way into formulation of future reform policies in Zimbabwe. RESEARCH QUESTIONS Essentially three broad research questions that are going to be addressed by this study are as follows: W ith reference to the failed Zimbabwean reform efforts: †¢ Why did Zimbabwe undertake reforms? †¢ What factors enabled Zimbabwe to adopt reforms and how did these factors shape reform design and implementation? †¢ How well did the reforms perform and, what were the results? With special reference to the failed Zimbabwean reform efforts, answers will also be sought for the following specific additional questions: †¢ Which main stakeholder groups with an interest in the country’s economic and political reforms were consulted or are being consulted? †¢ What role did lack of information and awareness about the reform programmes result in lack of ownership and therefore poor participation by all the concerned stakeholders, particularly the poor? †¢ Is it true that lack of political will and lobbying by certain interested groups, which saw their interests threatened by the reforms explains the failure of Zimbabwe’s economic reforms? If the above is true, what should have been done or should be done in the future to minimize the resistance to the reform process by those interest groups that are bound to lose as a result of the form process? †¢ Is it true that adverse and often change resistant ideologies, socio-cultural and so cietal norms also explain the failure of meaningful reforms to take place in Zimbabwe? HYPOTHESES This research project, in addition to the above research questions, will also be fundamentally guided by six testable hypotheses. These hypotheses are: †¢ Domestic crises triggered/beget reforms in Zimbabwe. †¢ External factors shaped Zimbabwe’s reforms, particularly the collapse of socialism, the influence of the IMF and the World Bank, world economy shocks, and learning/imitation from other countries. Reforms in Zimbabwe were blocked after they have been started as individual uncertainty gets resolved and losers became organized and asked for higher compensation and finally stopped their continuation. †¢ Lack of an explicit involvement or consultation of all the relevant stakeholders at the reform policy formulation/design and implementation stages, implying lack of consensus building and broad ownership of reforms, is partly responsible for the failure of the re form process in Zimbabwe. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The Zimbabwean research team advocates for an inclusive and consultative-based research process targeting all the relevant stakeholders, particularly the poor communities, which are in most cases adversely affected by the reform process. This is because some of the conventional research methodologies used in Zimbabwe in the past to study the reform processes did not include a participatory approach to doing research that can enhance both relevance and effectiveness of the research process itself. Such conventional research methodologies have in most cases produced disappointing results, which have further marginalized the poor and therefore continue to exclude them from crucial government decision-making processes in Zimbabwe. It is against this background that the active participation of local actors, the poor, policy makers, representatives of the business community, disadvantaged groups and other interested stakeholders in the Zimbabwean research project is of fundamental importance. This is because it is going to be part of the research team’s strategy to nurture participatory-based policy making, implementation and evaluation processes as well as social analysis in Zimbabwe. DATA COLLECTION METHODS Since studying reforms in Zimbabwe calls for the need to gather both qualitative and quantitative information from our respondents, in this study, besides the use of available secondary data, e. g. documents, reports, books, files, statistics, etc. , additional qualitative and quantitative information is going to be gathered through the use of individual case studies. Much emphasis will also be put on personal observations and intensive informal discussions with respondents and key informants during the study period and providing a well-documented description of the reform process and outcomes in Zimbabwe. This description is going to rely heavily on secondary data to be gathered from both national and international sources and will involve summarizing empirical results obtained by other studies and discussing the performance of economic variables such growth, investment, exports, savings, macro stability and competitiveness rankings; social indicators such as income/assets distribution, poverty, earnings, health and nutritional status, education enrolment, and social expenditure levels; and political indicators such as political awareness, autonomy, confidence/credibility in government; etc. Real changes in exports and imports are good indicators of effectiveness of trade liberalization policies during reforms and therefore will calculate in the process of doing the study. The outcome of the financial reform will be analysed by observing the following: †¢ Ratio of broad money to GDP; †¢ Concentration ratio as measured by share of assets of largest banks to total bank assets; and †¢ Price stability or inflation trends overtime. Another indicator, however, which is associated with financial reform, is desegmentation of the financial sector so that they can offer a broad array of financial services. The new types of products, which were introduced during the reform will also be catalogued and analysed. The effectiveness of tax reform measures will be assessed through the following amongst others: †¢ Tax revenue to GDP ratio; and †¢ Ratio of international trade taxes to total revenue. The above will be aided by the conduct of an analytical narrative of the whole reform process, which will help us to analyse the causal factors or the driving forces behind the reform. In addition micro level case studies will be used to qualitatively test of some our hypothesis. Informal interviews are going to be carried out with all important persons who were advisers, academics, donor agencies, business leaders, union leaders, consumer and student representatives, farmers’ and employers’ representatives, central bank and government officials as well as heads of institutions, committees and task forces that were created to strengthen state capacity to implement reforms during the reform period.

The American Presidency essays

The American Presidency essays The Power Of the American Presidency The office of the American President is unquestionably a democratically ruled position. The checks and balances of the Legislative and Judicial branches, known as Separation of Powers, keep the presidency one of the most important duties in the world, but at the same time, the checks and balances do not let the president have too Separation of power was very effective; The three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) are kept separate, and each has different powers. Congress has legislative, or law making, powers; the President has the power to carry out, or execute, the laws; and the Judicial branch had the judging power, used to interpret the laws. In addition, each branch is able to restrain or balance the powers of the other two branches upon power abuse. If the President is suspected of unlawful acts, he can be impeached, or tried by the House and Senate for misusing his power. If he is found guilty, he can be thrown out of office, unless two thirds of Congress agrees with a treaty he proposes. Furthermore, if the President wants to spend money, his request must pass through Congress, since it has control over spending. Lastly, Congress can re-pass a vetoed bill. Congress also has checks and balances against itself. The president can veto a bill from Congress, and although Congress can override a veto, obtaining a two-thirds vote is very difficult. Public speeches by the President may also concern the public with an issue, putting pressure on Congress to The American President is one of the most important persons on earth. The president, however, cannot pass a single bill without the approval of the House and the Senate. The president can propose bills, and he often deals with many short, yet unthinkably important questions concerning various factors throughout the world. ...

Types of College Homework Assignments That Take Most Time

Types of College Homework Assignments That Take Most Time Types of College Homework Assignments That Take Most Time If your academic obligations involve a lot of written work, you will appreciate that writing high quality, well-researched work on any subject takes an enormous amount of time. There are a number of key steps when you are writing something like an essay or an assignment, once you have a sound understanding of your subject, you need to complete a literature review, any additional research that may be required, you then need to draft your work, have it proofread, and complete a final review to ensure that you have appropriately addressed the subject and met the assessment requirements. One of the key factors that determine how long a specific essay or assignment is going to take you to be completed is the length that you have been asked to submit. While the complexity of the subject is also a key factor, whether you need to write two thousand words or fifty thousand words is a good indication of how best to prioritize and allocate time to the work that you need to get done. Your assignment or essay may take you anything from two hours to two weeks. In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the different types of written assessments that you may encounter at college or university and give you a guide as to how long you should expect of them to take you to complete while also allowing time for your study/life balance. 1. Essays and Assignments in Humanities Humanities is the study of history, politics, psychology, social science, and philosophy. The length of work required during your humanities studies will generally be determined by the stage of the course at which you are at. At the early stages of your degree, it is likely that the assessment requirements will be around 2,000 words per paper. On average, you should allocate a minimum of two hours to complete this length of work if it is a subject that you are familiar with, or longer if you will need to undertake research in order to address the assessment requirements. 2. Assessment Tasks in Science and Technology In the more technical aspects of a study, the focus is often more on calculations than on the written words. Written assessments in these fields tend to be around 500 words. As a general rule, you should dedicate, at least, one hour to these assessment tasks. 3. Major Thesis Requirements When it comes to your thesis or a major piece of written assessment, this is an undertaking that will generally take you months to complete. Most of the time is going to be spent doing the research and analysis required to underpin your assertion, but you should be drafting and writing your submission as you work through this process. It is important that you do not let yourself feel overwhelmed by the mountain of work ahead of you. Prioritize where it is most valuable to spend your time, map out how you are going to use your time to complete the assessment requirements, and you will be well on your way to scoring the grades you need to achieve your academic aspirations. At you can buy homework online on any topic, and in any discipline you need.

Marketing Planning and Strategy (Organizations or Individuals) 2 Assignment

Marketing Planning and Strategy (Organizations or Individuals) 2 - Assignment Example One of the most effective tools is to get the customers involved in the marketing process through the social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Additionally, it is recommended that the customers’ opinions are sought during the testing or initial phase so that they feel part of the entire marketing campaign (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010; Kotler & Keller, 2011). Both marketers and consumers are crucial elements for effectiveness of the marketing programs. Since the consumers are at the consumption end, the marketing team has to make sure that the messages are communicated via the most frequently used mediums such as social media, technological gadgets (smartphones, tablets) and Television (Akroush, 2012; Kotler & Keller, 2011). Hence, the marketers and consumers have to work like a team so that they can reap the benefits of successfully meeting the customer’s demands. At present, the latest trend in marketing is to develop a two-way strategy which will ease the message delivery and receiving procedure. The professionals have to utilise the mediums available in the market with complete and strategic analysis so that the company can survive in the ever changing market. Hennig-Thurau, T., Malthouse, E., Friege, C., Gensler, S., Lobschat, L., Rangaswamy, A., & Skiera, B. (2010). The impact of new media on customer relationships. Journal of Service Research, 13(3),

The HR Director - about JAL Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 2

The HR Director - about JAL - Essay Example I would appreciate if the JAL and IASCO workers could come up to me and share with me what they feel about the entire working regime in place and how they can contribute towards a changing climate. This would put an end to the acrimony which has arisen within the JAL umbrella and which needs to be taken care of at the very earliest (Tomei 2003). The organizational fabric is getting hurt and this cannot be tolerated at all. So it is in the best interest of the organization to keep away those factors which are creating some form of nuisance and find a way to deal with him in a very strict and harsh way. On the same token, all out efforts would be made to ensure that there are no problems left at the end, so that the JAL employees and the IASCO workers could take a sigh of relief. The tension thus existent could be thwarted if I am steadfast in my approach to resolve all disputes and if I am geared to meet these problems in a head on manner, which I shall promise to do with all my faith and conviction. I believe the business is going wrong because there is no set philosophy of the work as such. The employees are uncertain about their jobs and some of them think of the other clan as the inferiority group, which is abysmal to state the least. I would take notice of this in a very strict way because at the end of the day, each employee there is meant to attend work so that they can give their best, and not to indulge in petty issues and fights. My aim is to address these matters because these mean a lot for the sake of the organization and which is in essence hurting the cause of JAL as a single unit. The business is also going wrong because no one is paying attention at the moment, and much care has to be brought in within the related equation. At the beginning of my term, I would make it clear that discipline would rule the roost because it is the only thing that unifies the organization as a single entity. If the employees are disciplined enough to understand that their organizational basis depends on their courteous behaviors and actions, the organization shall return the favor to them as well.  

Letter :: essays research papers

Legislator Donald Trotta Dear Donald Trotta   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  My name is Jeffrey Magloire and I am a current matriculating student at Sullivan County Community College I have a couple of issues that I wanted to bring forward to your attention. As you may or may not know Sullivan County Community College has just constructed a new dormitory for incoming students. This Dormitory has opened up doors to many students that could not handle the commute to and from school. Although the dormitory has been an advantage to students traveling; the students have been living in poor condition for the last five weeks. The first problem occurred the day we walked in. The students were put into rooms where the paint smell was still resident and was the cause of two asthma attacks. We still have not received camera’s which would have been no problem if they had more than two security guards for each shift in our 350 capacity student dorm. I have read the contract that was handed to me and the dormitory has violated many promises made on that contract. The first violation has made many students drop out of school and go home and miss one semester of school. The Dormitory Corporation promised us daily maintenance on all of our bathrooms but the maintenance workers come only three times a week which has raised hazardous fumes coming from the bathroom and also the bathroom utensils are not available to students frequently which has deferred the students from having proper hygiene. The roof fire alarm has not been turned off due to the shortness of security officers and the alarm goes off every night due to loitering. They also promised that we will have telephone service which has not been honored and most of students have no way of contacting their friends and family. The School has one phone line and that one phone line is occupied by resident assistant, resident managers, security and is also the phone that security uses to contact the fire department in case of emergency.

Science, Philosophy and Society

Subject: Science, Philosophy and Society Question: Do you know you are not in the Matrix, and does it matter? From my understanding, I am not live in a real life, I live in some kind of system such as Matrix Philosophers and physicists were discussed a lot about the matrix that we live in, so and they gave much more ideas about the computer simulation and a real life. From my point of view, we are absolutely live in the matrix, and the life is not real that we live. I think the world is somehow like a system and everything depends on one another. And I have enough clear reasons and examples to prove that. So if we think carefully and logically, we can admit that the life we live in is not real. Why?Let's think logically, about on the planet Earth that we live in. If the moon was just a little bit further or closer away from our planet how that would affect and change everything and if we were further closer to the sun how that would affect and change everything and how our body has these complex functions process oxygen and sunlight what it produces and we it's so complicated. And how we create, so we have been created right everything that we create in our society starts with a thought by our brain. The world we live in feels normal and ordinary. It feels like this is just how humans exist and always existed. But its not. According to my understanding, our planet is going round its axis, and we can not live on the planet than from the planet Earth. We are protected by the layers of the sky, and we are given air and water for our lives, and we will do other important things for survive by ourselves. For example; we are creating different types of physical and intelligent techniques to make things physically easer, and we are contrive different kind of products to use; we cultivate different kinds of plans to eat. If we do not do these things, we can not possibly imagine our lives. So from my understanding, it's just like a perfectly structured program, and we've got this perfectly structured program, we have to play for alive and we have programmed into this planet Earth. Maybe my ideas are wrong, but think carefully, that our brain and body is such a perfectly structured system. For example; if we smell, hear, eat, touch, or see anything, we can not say it's all real because everything we fell that automatically will send signals to our basic system which is brain. So we can easily say it is somehow like a system. If we do not have a brain we can not feel at all. Take an example of the stomach, and this is very complex such as other organisms is works like a system. So single cell of the 10000 trillions cells in our body actually has its own intelligence, yes is it incredible but when we zoom it, we can see it like a universe.Furthermore, how do we know that anything is exists how do we know there's a world outside my mind I look around there a world of cars and tables and trees and buildings how do really that any of it is real I think none of them is real, so why? Because, many things that we see and the physical objects is not to show us the truth it is to hide the truth so that we do not have to deal with all that complexity and we have a little eye candy for our species that let us do what we need to do to stay alive. So we can see only outsides and we cannot see inside that things and as will as any kind of very little things. We can only see things simpler, but it will look totally different when we look at it with microscopic, closely-distinct, and distant proximity devices. For example, we cannot see bacteria floating in the air, so millions of different kinds of bacteria fly in the air we breathe. We cannot afford to see very small insects and neither plants. So I admire that everything that we see is not real. We see and feel this truth, but that does not mean we live in real life. We only see tenth of what we see around us, this mean we only see falsehood but not real.I believe that all people are created by Allah and live in a real life. And I want to say an example of a book created by God, the book is called Quran. If we take Islam from a religious point of view, if we see the Quran which is 1400yrs old, still mentions many facts which is we are not live in real life, for example we cannot see and feel any kind of the soul and the snouts, and this cannot be seen by human eyes, but animals can see it and also they can be seen on the camera images we are just living in a system that God has created, but we can see real life after we die. Some people may claim that the Quran was changed as new scientific facts were discovered. But this cannot be the case, because it is a historically documented fact that the Quran is preserved in it is original language. A Quran was written down and memorised by people during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad.Thank you for your time.