Sommerfeld, an assistant professor of accounting at the University of Texas, shows his shallow historical background in his Introduction, which explains the movement culminating in the Alliance for Progress without mentioning either Eisenhower’s Declaration of Newport in 1960 or Juscelino Kubitschek’s Operation Pan America. The Punta del Este Conference appears under a heading “The Presidential Meeting,” although it was attended by finance ministers. Sommerfeld ascribes to social development a priority over economic development, whereas the Charter of the Alliance and its implementation have given equal weight to both.
Early chapters of the book deal with the laudable objectives of tax reform. There follow explicit comments on existing levels and distinctive features of income and excise taxes, customs duties, exemptions, and the problems of tax administration. The later chapters present findings, recommendations, and the place of tax legislation in the context of other reform measures. Twenty-five statistical tables and illustrations supporting the author’s conclusions come largely from publications of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, or the Interamerican Development Bank. The author’s liberal, progressive views derive essentially from secondary North American sources. The bibliography contains two solitary items published in Latin America. It is lamentable that no professional journals or other Hispanic sources were deemed worthy of inspection. (A half dozen Pan American Union publications are cited.)
The author recommends to Latin American governments that they close income tax loopholes, concentrate on administrative deficiencies, and increase the take from sales, gifts, inheritances, luxuries, and capital gains. His tone often verges on the didactic, but he is modest enough to warn that comprehensive and intensive study of each country is still needed. He concedes that he has not dealt with criteria for governmental expenditures, clearly a “critically important part of tax policy” (p. 14).
