On 7 March, acting on behalf of ITIC President Daniel Witt, ITIC co-founder and Economic Adviser Charles McLure turned over to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University a collection of documents created during the 1993-1995 process of tax reform in Kazakhstan. While most of these documents were produced by the staffs of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Finance and State Tax Inspectorate and their foreign advisers, some were produced by representatives of ITIC’s sponsor companies.

The documents cover the period beginning in March 1993, when Finance Minister E.Z. Derbisov invited the Tax Foundation to lead a mission to Almaty to discuss tax aspects of improving his country’s investment climate, and ending in April 1995, when President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed into law the first modern tax system in the former Soviet Union.

During that period, Finance Minister Derbisov and Marat Ospanov, head of the Tax Inspectorate, signed a “principles protocol” that led to McLure’s preparation of white papers to help the Ministry staff understand the principles and objectives of sound tax policy. Vice President Erik Asanbaev subsequently asked Witt and McLure to lead the development of a modern tax code in cooperation with Ministry staff; Members of Parliament; and representatives from the IMF, EU, OECD, US Treasury, and USAID. A conference was held in London, at which ITIC was named secretariat for the corps of foreign advisers.

ITIC co-founder and Economic Adviser Charles McLure delivers materials on Tax Reform in Kazakhstan to Anatol Shmelev, the Robert Conquest Curator for Russia and Eurasia at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Archives.