Current Project

Survey of Taxpayers in Eswatini: Compliance Costs, Digital Services, and Attitudes towards Compliance

The Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) has partnered with researchers from the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) to carry out a survey of approximately 1,500 taxpayers in Eswatini. The purpose of this survey is to generate evidence to inform ERS’s tax compliance strategy and ongoing improvements to digital taxpayer services, focusing primarily on measuring tax compliance costs and understanding taxpayers’ experiences with, and perceptions of, ERS’s digitalisation initiatives and the broader tax system.
This research forms part of a broader collaborative research partnership between ERS and ICTD. This partnership has been ongoing since 2019 and has supported ERS in generating rigorous, policy-relevant evidence to strengthen tax administration and service delivery.
For more information about the survey, read this news story.

Researchers

Celeste Scarpini

Celeste Scarpini is a Researcher at the ICTD, and a PhD student at the Department of Economics, University of Sussex. Her main research interests relate to tax administration in sub-Saharan Africa, from technology adoption to data management and revenue collection strategies.

Fabrizio Santoro

Fabrizio Santoro is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and Senior Research Fellow at ICTD where he co-leads the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) programme. Previously, he was Research Lead for the second component of the ICTD's DIGITAX Research Programme. His main research interests relate to governance, public finance, and taxation, with a strong focus on impact evaluation methodologies and statistical analysis. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex.

Adrienne Lees

Adrienne Lees is a Doctoral Fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD), working primarily on projects relating to tax administration and compliance. She was previously an ODI Fellow in the Tax Policy Department at the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development in Uganda. Adrienne holds an MSc in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford and is completing her PhD in Economics at the University of Sussex.

Giulia Mascagni

Giulia Mascagni is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and Executive Director of the ICTD. Her main area of work is taxation, but she also has research interest in public finance, evaluation of public policy, and aid effectiveness. She is an economist by training, holding a PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex. Her main geographical interest lies in African countries, with a particular focus on Ethiopia and Rwanda.

Giovanni Occhiali

Giovanni Occhiali is a Development Economist based at the Institute of Development Studies, where he works on a number of projects related to Tax Administration and Compliance, Tax and Governance and co-leads ICTD’s capacity building programme together with Dr Max Gallien. His research focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, and outside of the field of taxation his main interests are energy economics and industrial policies. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham and prior to joining ICTD, he was a Researcher at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei and an Overseas Development Institute Fellow at the National Revenue Authority of Sierra Leone.
Research theme:
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