This project builds on an existing one which studies the drivers of gender and tax compliance is a selection of low-income settings in Africa namely, Rwanda, Eswatini, and Ethiopia, and on-going quantitative analysis with data from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the DRC. In the preceding project, we used survey and administrative data available internally within the ICTD to conduct a descriptive study on how gender matters for the various aspects of compliance i.e., enforcement, facilitation, and trust. Given that these datasets were not primarily designed for the purpose of this study, our results must be interpreted with this understanding. The most interesting outcomes to come out of the analysis so far have been on trust and facilitation. Female taxpayers trust revenue authorities less, and know lesser about the tax system than male counterparts do, and report finding it harder to file taxes. However, we find a clear distinction across genders in compliance behaviour – where women are more compliant than men in income declarations, paying tax on time, and claiming deductions. All of this goes to show that we do not fully understand from the data the key drivers of differences amongst men and women in these contexts. Whilst the literature even in high-income countries remains inconsistent, the aim of this project is to provide a qualitative focus on the experiences of female taxpayers to better understand their place within the broader tax system in three specific cases of Rwanda, Eswatini, and either Sierra Leone or Ethiopia.
Current Project