Technical Notes and Manuals
Technical Notes and Manuals are produced by IMF departments to expand the dissemination of their technical assistance advice. These papers present general advice and guidance, drawn in part from unpublished technical assistance reports, to a broader audience. This new series launched in September 2009.
2025
February 10, 2025
Sibling Rivalry in the Financial Safety Net: Governance Arrangements for Bank Resolution and Deposit Insurance
Description: The technical note and manual "Sibling Rivalry in the Financial Safety Net," authored by Atilla Arda and Jan Nolte, examines the governance structures essential critical for effective bank resolution and deposit insurance functions. Considering the vulnerabilities exposed during the 2008-09 global financial crisis, the note emphasizes the interconnectedness of these two critical functions, both of which aim to safeguard depositors and maintain financial stability. The authors discuss various institutional arrangements, highlighting the choice between integrating both functions within existing agencies or establishing new entities. The note then identifies potential conflicts of interest among resolution authorities, deposit insurance systems, other safety net participants such as central banks and supervisory agencies, and the financial sector. These potential conflicts underscore the necessity of robust governance frameworks to address these challenges and ensure autonomy, operational independence, and accountability of the two functions. The note emphasizes the need for strong legal protections for individuals in charge of resolution and deposit insurance, ensuring they can take decisive actions during crises. By exploring best practices and case studies, including Denmark's integrated framework, the authors provide valuable insights into optimizing institutional and governance arrangements by integrating the deposit insurance function within the resolution authority. This could support effective cooperation among authorities which is vital for creating resilient financial safety nets.
January 24, 2025
A Guide and Tool for Projecting Public Gross Financing Needs
Description: This guide presents the analytical underpinnings and a manual for the Public Debt Dynamics Tool with Gross Financing Needs (DDT_GFN), an extension of the Public Debt Dynamics Tool (DDT). The DDT projects public debt as percent of GDP under a baseline and alternative scenarios. The DDT_GFN presents debt-to-GDP projections and the corresponding public gross financing needs (GFN)-to-GDP projections for all DDT scenarios, including fan charts for both public debt and GFN. The DDT_GFN also computes fiscal adjustment paths for a user defined GFN target and adjustment period. Twelve often publicly available macrofiscal variables are needed to perform a rich analysis of public debt and GFN dynamics. The DDT_GFN was developed by the IMF Institute for Capacity Development to be used for its capacity development work on macroeconomic frameworks for forecasting and policy analysis.
Notes:
ICD Public Debt Dynamics Tool with Gross Financing Needs (DDT_GFN)
January 24, 2025
Developing a Risk-Based Compliance Improvement Plan for Customs Administrations
Description: This technical note offers practical guidance to senior managers and technical staff in Customs administrations for developing a Compliance Improvement Plan (CIP) using an Integrated Risk Management (IRM) approach. It clearly outlines the components of a CIP based on IRM, explains what it entails for a Customs administration, and how to develop it step-by-step. Additionally, it underscores the importance of identifying and implementing tailored treatment measures for various trader segments, which is crucial for enhancing compliance levels. Furthermore, it emphasizes the need to identify key vulnerabilities within processes that may lead to the realization of risks, proposing appropriate strategies to address them. The note also highlights other critical factors that must be considered to ensure the effective implementation of a CIP.
January 24, 2025
Using Top-Down Compliance Gap Techniques to Supplement the Compliance Risk Management Framework
Description: Traditional top-down tax gap assessments identify the size of a tax gap, but not its origins. By extracting more granular information from top-down tax gap assessments, and combining this information with compliance risk management (CRM) techniques, it is possible to: improve the accuracy of CRM techniques; improve the consistency of the likelihood and consequence dimensions of compliance risk assessments; identify emerging areas of tax compliance risk and; better disaggregate the direct and indirect revenue effects of compliance interventions, including the “behavioral component” within the indirect effects. Finally, it is also possible to determine the optimal revenue recovery from each segment of the taxpayer population.
2024
November 21, 2024
Understanding Artificial Intelligence in Tax and Customs Administration
Description: This technical note provides an overview of current thinking on artificial intelligence (AI) in tax and customs administration. Written primarily for senior officials, the intent of the note is to provide an awareness of AI that can help inform decision making and planning. The note opens with an exploration of historic and ongoing AI developments. It then provides an overview of legal and ethical concerns, AI use cases, guidance on how to promote AI's responsible use, and logic for introducing AI use cases into an operational setting. The note closes by presenting a selection of questions being debated by experts. In its annexes, the note includes (1) an example of an AI policy; (2) references to help develop AI strategy; and (3) methodology to risk assess AI use cases.
November 21, 2024
Managing Tax Incentives in Developing Countries
Description: This technical note sets out the essential elements to effectively manage tax incentives in developing countries, emphasizing the important role that revenue authorities must play in preventing abuses and revenue leakages. The note presents considerations for a risk-based compliance program on tax incentives that combines various supportive, preventative, and corrective practices and approaches. It also delineates key enablers, such as a whole-of-government approach, robust transparency and accountability practices, and a modern compliance risk management framework.
August 22, 2024
Revenue Authorities and their Boards of Management: Recent Developments
Description: This technical note provides detailed and updated information on the semi-autonomous Revenue Authority (RA) governance model for revenue administration, a model developed 40 years ago and used by some 35 administrations world-wide. The update is provided through a review of relevant legislation, questionnaire results, and outcomes of a series of seminars. The RA governance model has a unique governance structure that includes a Minister, a board of management, and a Chief Executive Officer - three partners. RAs are set up using specific enabling legislation. Clarity in the language used in the law is critical for establishing the exact roles of the three partners. The board of management is unique in that it usually has a more limited role (due in part to the confidentiality of individual taxpayer information) than a board of directors in a private sector corporation. Emerging issues with these boards are examined, and it is noted that some see the RA board role as becoming more closely aligned with private sector boards of directors. RAs were initially founded on the belief that more nimble HR practices and appropriate funding would result in more robust revenue administration. While it is difficult to establish direct causality between the adoption of the RA governance model and improved revenue administration, practitioners are convinced this is the case and that the HR and funding advantages need to be protected.
July 9, 2024
The Case for (and Against) Asset Management Companies in Banking Crises
Description: This technical note explores the advantages and disadvantages of establishing state-sponsored centralized asset management companies (AMCs) to address high levels of bank asset distress during financial crises. AMCs may offer potential benefits like mitigating downward price spirals or achieving efficiency gains by consolidating creditor claims and scarce expertise. However, significant risks and costs warrant careful consideration. These include extreme uncertainties in asset valuation and substantial operational and financial risks. Past international experiences highlight the dangers of underestimating these risks, potentially turning the AMC into a mechanism for deferring losses to taxpayers, rather than minimizing them, and ultimately increasing long-term public costs and moral hazard. This technical note emphasizes these trade-offs and discusses crucial design elements for effective AMCs: a clear mandate, transfer pricing that prudently reflects asset values and disposal costs, strong governance with independent management, and efficient operational processes promoting transparency and accountability.
February 26, 2024
Tax Administration: Essential Analytics for Compliance Risk Management
Description: This technical note introduces analytics for compliance risk management in tax administration. Together with its accompanying toolkit, the note is intended as a starter kit to support capacity development in compliance planning, risk, and intelligence groups. Developed primarily for emerging analysts new to tax administration, the note presents both theory and practical aspects of analytics. Its toolkit is comprised of an initial collection of analytics templates designed to assist in turning the theory presented into practice in the areas of: (1) compliance planning; (2) taxpayer profiling; and (3) audit case selection.
February 22, 2024
A Framework for Monitoring of and Reporting for External Project Loans in Developing Countries
Description: To produce timely and accurate debt reports at the central government level, it is essential to have a sound legal, administrative, and operational framework in place for debt data compilation, reconciliation, accounting, monitoring, and reporting. This note focuses on the arrangements for external project-based debt, which present distinctive challenges in debt reporting particularly in low-income and developing countries. The discussion complements existing literature and guidance on debt transparency by focusing on stages prior to the production of debt reports. The note also identifies the links between the management of project loans and other public financial management (PFM) processes, such as public investment management, budget preparation, fiscal and financial reporting. It shows that a comprehensive approach that considers these linkages can improve efficiency and transparency in fiscal and debt management. Although the focus is on the central government’s debt obligations, the ideas can be extended to cover government-guaranteed loans and public sector debt in general.