Tax and Governance in the Context of Scarce Revenues: Inefficient Tax Collection and its Implications in Rural West Africa
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Research in Brief 89
The expansion of the ‘tax net’ has commanded considerable domestic and international policy attention as a means of financing essential services, reducing dependence on international aid, and producing positive ‘government dividends.’ A growing body of research, however, questions the logic of extending the tax base, particularly among individuals and businesses in the urban informal economy, highlighting the associated revenue inefficiencies, negative equity implications, and lack of a direct relationship between tax payment and government accountability.
Vanessa van den Boogaard is a Research Fellow at the ICTD and a Senior Research Associate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She completed her PhD thesis on informal revenue generation and statebuilding in Sierra Leone, and has ongoing research on the topic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. Vanessa leads the ICTD’s new programme on civil society engagement in tax reform and co-leads the research programme on informal taxation.
Citation: Beach, R. and van den Boogaard, V. (2023) Tax and Governance in the Context of Scarce Revenues: Inefficient Tax Collection and its Implications in Rural West Africa, ICTD Research in Brief 89, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, DOI: 10.19088/ICTD.2023.035