For more than 30 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has designated May 31 as World No Tobacco Day, which aims to inform the public of the danger of using tobacco, the leading preventable cause of death in the world. A looming threat Africa is vulnerable to the tobacco industry. While global smoking rates have…
While many economists and politicians have begun to talk seriously about using wealth taxes to raise government revenue and curb rising inequality, one in every four people globally are already subject to a similar taxation model called Zakat. In the form of Zakat, Muslims around the world who possess wealth over a particular threshold are…
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…
It is widely recognised that “business as usual” will not close the estimated financing gap of USD 2.5 trillion that is needed annually to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. United by this realisation, the members of the multi-stakeholder-partnership Addis Tax Initiative (ATI) recently presented the ATI Declaration 2025 to renew political buy-in…
Though education is a core duty of the state, public education in Sierra Leone is financed not only by the formal government budget and off-budget aid, but also by informal contributions, taxes, and fees paid by households. Since independence in 1961, the state has consistently supported the ideal of universal free primary education, though in…
During the summer of 2020, the International Budget Partnership (IBP) and the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) worked collaboratively to conduct a broad scan of civil society organisations (CSOs) working in the taxation space with a specific interest in domestic taxation. Our objective was to create a comprehensive picture of the emerging field,…
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, changes that might ordinarily take a few years are now occurring in the span of just a few months. The uptake of e-commerce and the adoption of video-conferencing, for example, have increased rapidly. This distinctive feature of crises—that they can accelerate otherwise slow-moving trends—can be harnessed by those seeking to create…
Recurrent episodes of marginal communities being evicted from the waterfronts of Lagos have made global media headlines over the last four years. Up until 2016, the city had earned a hard-won status as a model of good urban governance for Africa. Along with better transport systems, waste management and security, the Lagos state government had re-established control over planning and…
This piece is co-published with the International Budget Partnership. Since its onset, governments the world over have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by ramping up spending and providing tax relief to ailing families and businesses, even in the face of dwindling revenues. This has inevitably led to widened fiscal deficits and ballooning public debts. For…
There is growing international attention on tax collection in low-income countries. This attention is only amplifying in light of the increased revenue pressures faced by governments around the world as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. While governments will be seeking new revenue sources in the coming years, increased revenue is only desirable in so…
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…
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…
