The Global Crisis, Retailers, Taxes And Regulations

After the 2008-2009 Global crisis, governments around the world implemented changes in taxes and regulations. In this study, using two survey datasets, we examine how these changes had affected retailers in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We look at several measures including the time spent by senior managers on regulations, the visits or inspections by tax officials, the number of inspections or meetings with tax officials, and whether a gift or informal payment was expected or requested by tax officials. The BEEPS IV survey serves as our pre-crisis sample and the beeps V survey serves as our post-crisis sample. We find that the results are mixed. Our results show that, postcrisis, time spent by senior management on regulations had significantly increased. This is a negative change that happened after the crisis. However, we also find that, post-crisis, there was a significant drop in the number of retailers that were visited or inspected by tax officials. The overall number of inspections or meetings with tax officials went down slightly, but this drop was not statistically significant. We also find that the percentage of retailers who felt that a gift or informal payment was expected or requested went down significantly. Overall, we conclude that the results are mixed. While certain aspects of regulations worsened (i.e. the time spent on regulations), other aspects (i.e. visits/inspections and expectation of informal payments) improved.