Unlike most sources of local revenue, responsibility for the different aspects of property tax administration in Africa is often split between central and local authorities. In many countries, central governments have, since the colonial period, retained responsibility for land titling, maintaining the cadastre, and property valuation, while other aspects of rate-setting and property tax collection…
Information technology (IT) holds great potential for improving property taxation: it can help accelerate property identification, digitalise and automate aspects of property valuation, facilitate payments by taxpayers, improve transparency, and strengthen data management. In practice however, the impact of new IT tools frequently underperforms relative to this potential – or fails altogether. This is often due to factors including unnecessarily complex or incompatible systems, poor customization to specific…
The Addis Tax Initiative (ATI), the Development Partners Network on Decentralisation & Local Governance (DeLoG) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) cordially invite you to the jointly organised next webinar of the series on the role of subnational domestic revenue mobilisation (DRM) for public service delivery. Background The benefits of DRM reforms at…
Closing date for applications: May 25, 2021 ICTD has secured new funding to launch the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI), based on a broad vision for supporting more effective, equitable and accountable subnational revenue mobilisation. The LoGRI Executive Director (ED) will be responsible for the overall leadership and delivery of the new initiative, building on…
Property valuation is essential for effectively mobilising property tax revenue. While it may seem straightforward in theory, in practice multiple administrative, legal, political, and financial challenges continue to limit effective property valuation across Africa. Dominant valuation methods have significant trade-offs between precision and equity, and across the continent property registers are frequently out of date, incomplete, and inaccurate. This leads to inequitable tax burdens across property owners and low collection…
On September 24-25th, the World Bank held its second annual tax conference on the topic of taxing personal income and wealth in developing countries. The conference featured leading academics and practitioners from different regions and invited both to discuss innovative research ideas with high policy relevance. A major theme of the conference was property taxation….
Following renewed funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and DFID, the African Property Tax Initiative (APTI) is pleased to announce a second call for proposals for research projects on property taxation that are of a high academic standard and relevant to policy and practice. We are calling for proposals on APTI’s six core…
The ICTD’s African Property Tax Initiative (APTI) was recently featured at the Urban Age conference in Addis Ababa. The conference, on the theme “Developing Urban Futures” was jointly organised by LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft. It convened urban experts, policymakers and practitioners from sub-Saharan Africa and other…
Africa is the fastest urbanising continent on the planet. In order to provide citizens with adequate public goods and services and invest in the required infrastructure, African cities need sufficient and sustainable revenues. Property taxation is equitable, and provides stable funding for local governments. In developed countries, property taxes are the mainstay of local funding….
The first action area of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development is mobilising domestic public resources. Described as “critical to achieving the sustainable development goals,” the countries of the General Assembly committed to “enhancing revenue administration through modernized, progressive tax systems, improved tax policy and more efficient tax collection.” Key to raising increased tax revenue in an equitable manner…
