ICTD Research Director Dr Giulia Mascagni has been featured in a third episode of the TADAT podcast series, sharing the latest research insights on taxing the wealthy in lower-income countries.
Mascagni was joined by ICTD consultant and Gender and Taxation lead Dr Jalia Kangave and Monica Tumukunde, a Supervisor at the Central Business District Liaison Office of the Uganda Revenue Authority. The three discussed how taxing the better-off more effectively should be a high priority for lower-income countries (LICs), because it can generate much needed public revenue, while improving tax systems’ equity and efficiency, according to Mascagni.
“There are many tools to tax the rich,” she says, “including and beyond the wealth tax. Most of these tax tools are already part of existing legal frameworks.”
The enforcement of tax laws is often uneven in low-income countries, resulting in unfairness. While great efforts go into registering large numbers of small and micro firms, not enough attention goes to implement effectively existing taxes that are more relevant for wealthier citizens, like those with rental incomes, capital gains, and self-employed professionals with incomes.
In order to implement such taxes, Mascagni says national tax administrations can start taxing the wealthy more effectively now, with the tools they already have. These efforts need to be complemented with international action to crack down on financial secrecy and evasion.
Watch the episode below:
Episode 3: “Taxing High Net Worth Individuals”
Research mentioned in this podcast:
- Summary Brief – Taxing High Net Worth Individuals: Lessons from the Uganda Revenue Authority’s Experience
- Working Paper – Boosting Revenue Collection from Taxing High Net Worth Individuals: The Case of Uganda
- Working Paper – What Can We Learn from the Uganda Revenue Authority’s Approach to Taxing High Net Worth Individuals?
Sharing ICTD research insights
Mascagni was also previously featured on two other episodes of the podcast, sharing the latest insights on tax compliance research in lower-income countries.
She joined Mick Keen, Deputy Director of Fiscal Affairs at the IMF for the two conversations. In the first, moderated by Annette Schmitz of the TADAT Secretariat, they discussed how new developments in methods and data availability have meant that tax experiments have gradually moved away from lab settings and towards the field, which has allowed significant advances in the literature on tax compliance.
Episode 1 “From the Lab to the Field: Lessons Learned from Tax Compliance Research”
Research mentioned in this podcast:
- Working Paper – From the Lab to the Field: A Review of Tax Experiments
- Results on knowledge and taxpayer education from Rwanda – Teach to Comply? Evidence from a Taxpayer Education Programme in Rwanda
- Blog – Taxpayer Education: Why it Matters and How Research Can Help
- Results on roll-out of electronic sales registration machines in Ethiopia – Can ICTs increase tax compliance? Evidence on taxpayer responses to technological innovation in Ethiopia
- The effective corporate income tax burden on firms in Ethiopia – The Corporate Tax Burden in Ethiopia: Evidence from Anonymised Tax Returns
- Results on the effective VAT tax burden and missing input claims in Rwanda – The VAT in Practice: Equity, Enforcement and Complexity
- Results on backfiring – Tax Compliance in Rwanda: Evidence from a Message Field Experiment
Episode 2 “Chasing Tax Ghosts”
In this episode, Giulia and Mick spoke spoke with Munawer Khwaka Sultan, a tax expert for the IMF and the World Bank, and the conversation was hosted by Chrys Esseau Thomas of the IMF.
Research mentioned in this podcast:
- Working paper – Active Ghosts: Nil-filing in Rwanda (brief version here)
- Brief – Nil-Filing in Eswatini: Should the Revenue Authority be Bothered?
- Results from Eswatini – To file or not to file? Another dimension of tax compliance: the Eswatini Taxpayers’ survey
Stay tuned for a fourth ICTD appearance on the TADAT podcast, which will be live later this year.
