The past decade has witnessed a surge in international interest in the importance of ‘tax morale’ as a key component of strategies for strengthening tax compliance in developing countries. This focus has been long overdue, and there is now broad research evidence that strengthening tax morale can have important benefits in encouraging ‘quasi-voluntary’ tax compliance….
Read moreCitizens’ tax morale can enhance actual compliance behavior and provide governments with the necessary revenue. This study aims to identify the various factors that shape citizens’ attitudes towards taxation and suggest ways to improve compliance through positive motivations. The 2013 5th round Afrobarometer survey conducted in Ethiopia is our main source of data. A sub…
Read moreThis inquiry aims to examine the effect of intergovernmental fiscal transfers on fiscal behaviours of local governments in Ethiopia for the period 1992–2018. The empirical analysis shall follow the systems general methods of moments regression technique. The motivation for using this estimation technique is to provide special focus to the issue of endogeneity by estimating…
Read moreGraeme Stewart-Wilson will be working with researchers and tax authorities in Sierra Leone to document and derive lessons from ongoing and relatively successful reform efforts. He will be writing up at least two case studies – one related to reform efforts at the National Revenue Agency, led by long time ICTD partner Samuel Jibao, and…
Read moreGeographic information systems (GIS) are underused as a tool for analysis of tax evasion and addressing compliance problems. This research aims to show how geospatial data can be harnessed to identify and estimate noncompliance of unregistered taxpayers and under reported income by combining geospatial information and taxpayer data to indirectly measure taxable income. The information…
Read moreDeveloping countries typically face with low tax compliance both at the extensive and intensive margins. In the presence of weak enforcement capacity by state institutions, leveraging information diffusion through firm networks may be a cost-effective way of improving tax compliance. Senegal is confronted with two major challenges in terms of tax compliance. Firstly, the tax…
Read moreOn February 8th, the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) announced a new capacity-building program with the Ugandan and Rwandan Revenue Authorities. This project will be a year-long pilot of workshops and collaborative research between researchers from the ICTD and staff from the revenue authorities in Rwanda and Uganda. The course is mostly about…
Read moreTaxation is thought to stimulate participation and accountable governance. This project examines how tax collection affects local bureaucrat performance in the DRC. We exploit random variation in whether local bureaucrats known as avenue chiefs were responsible for property tax collection (treatment), or whether agents of the tax ministry collected taxes within chief jurisdictions instead (control)….
Read moreThe IMF and World Bank revenue statistics show that, between 2000 and 2012, property taxes represent on average of 0.1 to 0.2% of GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa (0.1% in Senegal). In OECD countries, the average range is between 2-3% of GDP. This poor performance suggests considerable scope for improvement. In Senegal, as in most developing…
Read moreTax to GDP ratio in developing countries is still remarkably low. One of the key factors behind poor tax collection is low tax compliance. This study aims to test, using a randomized controlled trial, the effect of a multi-faceted nudging strategy from the Eswatini Revenue Authority (SRA), targeting the whole population of income taxpayers in…
Read moreThe Ferdi will update the legal and tax database country by country. It estimates that the average time needed to update a country is four days. However, it goes without saying that countries that have made major tax reforms will require more time than countries whose laws have not changed. For example, Burkina Faso, which…
Read moreHow do states in a low-tax, low-capacity equilibrium spur citizens to start paying taxes? This experiment would examine the direct and network effects of an increase in tax enforcement by the government on tax compliance. We partner with the Provincial Ministry of Taxation and randomly assign firms in the city of Kananga, DRC, to one…
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