Despite being recognised as a critical aspect of tax compliance, taxpayer knowledge is a very under-explored topic. Using evidence from Rwanda and Eswatini, Giulia Mascagni explores why taxpayer education matters, whether it is effective, and how research can inform governments’ taxpayer education programmes. Across Africa, many taxpayers have a shockingly poor understanding of the tax…
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…
One of the strongest arguments for investing in the tax capacity of developing countries is the supposed participation dividend of taxation. Beyond providing more tax revenue with which the government can supply essential public services, tax collection is thought to stimulate citizen engagement in the government, and ultimately, political accountability. The accumulated evidence of a…
The increased emphasis on the role of sustainable financing to support the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 underscored a renewed initiative to enhance domestic resource mobilisation (DRM), especially in developing countries. Under target 17.1 of the SDGs, countries committed to strengthen DRM through international support to developing countries to improve, in…
More and more countries, including developing countries, are introducing unilateral measures to adapt their corporate tax rules to a digitalising economy. For countries as varied as Kenya, India and Tunisia, this has taken the form of a tax on digital services provided by foreign companies, often referred to collectively as Digital Services Taxes (DSTs), or…
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…
Mobile money taxation is, for some, a controversial topic. One the one hand, it is critical for developing countries to increase domestic revenue in order to finance public goods and services and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. One the other, mobile money is seen as something of a development success story, providing access to financial…
Developing countries lose substantial revenues every year to corporate tax avoidance, exacerbated by globalization and digitalization. As part of the OECD/G20 project on addressing the tax challenges of the digitalization of the economy, the OECD secretariat have recently presented the Unified Approach (UA) to deal with the tax revenue losses from digitalization, by giving market…
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…
International money laundering and international illicit financial flows (IFFs) are major problems for poor and rich countries alike, but especially the poor. Both are strongly rooted in fraudulent treatment of imports and exports as they cross international borders. This includes smuggling, misclassification of products to change their valuation, and straight mis-invoicing, i.e. deliberately declaring erroneous…
Globally, governments are adjusting their tax policies to help address the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. In most countries, these adjustments have focused on supporting businesses to weather the economic disruptions of Covid-19 restrictions. Governments everywhere have been called on to defer or waive taxes on the businesses most affected by lockdowns and other restrictions….
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…
