Traps to Avoid in Goverment

In their book If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, Eggers and O’Leary¹ identify seven critical traps that are highly relevant to the formulation of an effective strategy in Goverment:

1. The Tolstoy Trap (Tolstoy Syndrome): Seeing only what you want to see and ignoring inconvenient facts.
2. The Design-Free Design Trap: Designing policies for legislative passage, not for real-world implementation.
3. The Stargate Trap (Partial Map Trap): Fumbling handoffs and lacking clear execution plans throughout project delivery.
4. The Overconfidence Trap: Creating unrealistic budgets and timelines due to excessive optimism.
5. The Sisyphus Trap: Repeatedly pushing the same initiative without learning from past failures.
6. The Complacency Trap: Failing to recognize when a program needs change or improvement.
7. The Silo Trap: Allowing organizational silos to block information flow and collaboration.

Specific Tax Administration Traps to Avoid

Associated with these pitfalls is one that directly affects the tax administration function, which can be referred to as the Early Tax Introduction Trap. This trap is characterized by the introduction of a new tax, or an increase in the rate of an existing tax, before fully exhausting the tax base - in other words, before ensuring that all taxpayers who are required to declare and pay taxes have been properly registered and accounted for.

Similarly, another pitfall is what can be called the Missing Documentation Trap. This occurs when relevant events affecting a taxpayer’s accounting status are not registered in the integrated tax administration system (ITAS). Due to discretionary practices, such documents may be set aside, undermining the consistency of the system and making it nearly impossible to analyze those accounts in the future. For example, if a taxpayer receives a pardon from any government authority that impacts an account, this action should be recorded in the ITAS to enable proper future analysis.

This and other topics are available in the book Principios de Administración Tributaria published by Thomson Reuters - La Ley.