What is the connection between taxation and more open societies that the British aid programme aims to support? In long-term historical perspective, it is very close. The societies that enjoy the most open, democratic and accountable government are also those that tax the most – and spend the most on making life better for their…
Globally, tax collections are declining. Governments have cancelled or postponed some tax dues in the effort to bolster economies and keep enterprises solvent. With employment, trade and profits nevertheless shrinking, opportunities to collect income and profit taxes, VAT, and excise and import duties are also dwindling. For the next two years at least, many governments…
In the next few weeks, residents of Freetown are expecting to receive new property tax bills as part of a revamped and more progressive system. Approved as Sierra Leone was entering lockdown in mid-April, the revised arrangement places a greater onus on the richest and could increase the capital’s tax revenue five-fold. The new system has been…
So far, policy discussions about tax responses to Covid-19 have focused overwhelmingly on how to offer immediate tax relief. There is a clear sequence in these discussions: tax relief today, expanded revenue collection in the future to compensate. This blog explores a less conventional argument: that African governments may want to think much more immediately…
Across sub-Saharan Africa, ineffective property valuation presents a serious hurdle to strengthening local property taxes. Between January and August 2019 the IGC and ICTD co-piloted a simplified approach to property valuation in Freetown, Sierra Leone, that combines both surface area and easily-observable characteristics to arrive at an estimate of market value. The pilot, which built…
At the request of the ICTD, Professor Richard Bird generously agreed to review the new World Bank publication Innovations in Tax Compliance, which proposes a new framework to help guide the design of tax reform efforts. Richard was the founding Chair of the Advisory Group of the ICTD, and is a long term advisor to…
The government of Kaduna State, Nigeria, has been working to increase tax collection by broadening the tax base, investing in technology and modernisation, and implementing large-scale policy and administrative reform. These efforts have substantially improved the business environment and increased revenue collection. Yet, there is still significant room to boost voluntary tax compliance. At the…
This blog was jointly authored by Wilson Prichard (ICTD), Nora Lustig (CEQ), Sanjeev Gupta (CGD), Warren Krafchik (IBP), Ian Gary (Oxfam), and Brahima Coulibaly (Brookings). See their biographies on the right. This week over 170 policymakers, government officials, and members of academia, civil society and international organisations will gather in Berlin to discuss the future…
Recent years have seen surging international interest in strengthening tax collection in order to finance national development programs. Yet, despite evidence of high and frequently rising inequality across much of the developing world, strengthening the equity of tax systems has usually been low on the agenda. This in part reflects a technical debate: if the…
Over the past decade, international attention has increasingly focused on the potential contribution of taxation to improved development outcomes. In our recent book, Taxing Africa: Coercion, Reform and Development, we offer an overview of these issues and challenges in Africa. A major objective of the book is to highlight major political questions about taxation in Africa,…
States are currently struggling to reach global agreement on the taxation of digital firms such as Apple and Google, suggesting that an international regime characterised by impressive coherence over a century may be beginning to fragment. While work on the politics of the international tax regime is still largely preoccupied with the US, a ‘great power’, this fragmentation largely…
Nancy Lee from the Centre for Global Development (CGD) recently published a piece arguing for a “surge in support” for domestic revenue mobilisation in low income countries and a major shift in how donor support for domestic revenue mobilisation is organised. It is an intriguing proposal, but one which is also likely to face very…
