How effective are presumptive tax regimes in terms of revenue collection and administration cost? While there has been some research on the cost-effectiveness of different tax handles, most of this has been concentrated in higher-income countries. There are some indications that presumptive and simplified tax handles usually contribute only a very small – and potentially decreasing – fraction of tax revenues. At the same time, there are strong reasons to believe that collection and enforcement costs may be relatively high, especially in rural contexts where revenue officials might have to travel substantial distances to collect relatively low payments.
This project seeks to provide an assessment of the revenue collected through a simplified tax regime, and of the costs accrued through the collection, with a focus on the tax stamp collected by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) – which will ultimately contribute to a wider understanding of simplified tax regimes more broadly and likewise highly policy relevant for the GRA.