In 2019 the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) commissioned a National Taxpayer Survey and related study on tax compliance to the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD). This study is meant to serve as background to the new RRA Tax Compliance Strategy, which is scheduled to be launched in July 2020. Data was collected in January and February 2020, with the help of Vanguard Economics (a local survey company). It includes a sample of 2,000 small and medium taxpayers distributed in Rwanda, and it is nationally representative. The sampling was done starting from small and medium taxpayers in RRA’s taxpayer registry.
Right after the data was collected, Rwanda discovered the first cases of Covid-19 and started a national lockdown. The lockdown will certainly have important implications for tax revenue and the RRA is considering appropriate ways to respond to this new situation. In this fast-moving landscape, tax attitudes might have shifted – with implications for RRA’s compliance strategy. It is therefore highly policy relevant to collect follow-up data on tax attitudes in particular, in light of the recent crisis. The team aim to use these data for a more academic comparative study on the impacts of covid-19 on tax.
