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Showing 1 - 8 of 8 publications
June 2022

Enablers, Barriers and Impacts of Digital Financial Services: Insights from an Evidence Gap Map and Implications for Taxation

by Philip Mader, Maren Duvendack, Adrienne Lees, Aurelie Larquemin & Keir Macdonald

Digital financial services (DFS) have expanded rapidly over the last decade, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. They have been accompanied by claims that they can alleviate poverty, empower women, help businesses grow, and improve macroeconomic outcomes and government effectiveness. As they have become more widespread, some controversy has arisen as governments have identified DFS revenues and…

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May 2022

Mandating Digital Tax Tools as a Response to Covid: Evidence from Eswatini

by Fabrizio Santoro, Razan Amine & Tanele Magongo

Many tax authorities changed the mode of interacting with taxpayers from physical to online as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, to diminish the spread of the virus. Eswatini, the country under study, mandated the use of online tax filing through the e-Tax system for all income tax payers, coupled with a zero-cash-handling policy for…

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March 2022

Digital Payments Taxation Factsheet: Uganda

by Adrienne Lees & Daniela Villacreces Villaces

Digital financial services are growing in Uganda and play an important role in supporting the financial inclusion of the poor. Recently, the Ugandan government has increased the level of taxation on traditional and digitally-delivered financial services, with some taxes applying specifically to digital payments. Download our factsheet to learn more.

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February 2022

Digital financial services and digital IDs: What potential do they have for better taxation in Africa?

by Fabrizio Santoro, Laura Munoz, Wilson Prichard & Giulia Mascagni

New digital technologies are now being widely used in Africa and lower-income countries (LICs). This has had an impact on tax administration, which has been increasingly digitised. Specifically Digital Financial Services (DFS) and digital IDs can improve tax administration. They have the potential to identify taxpayers more easily, communicate with them better, enforce and monitor…

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February 2022

Should Governments Tax Digital Financial Services? A Research Agenda to Understand Sector-Specific Taxes on DFS

by Laura Munoz, Giulia Mascagni, Wilson Prichard & Fabrizio Santoro

Digital financial services (DFS) have rapidly expanded across Africa and other low-income countries. At the same time, low-income countries face strong pressures to increase domestic resource mobilisation, and major challenges in taxing the digital economy. A growing number are therefore advancing or considering new taxes on DFS. These have generated much debate and there are…

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February 2022

The Promise and Limitations of Information Technology for Tax Mobilisation

by Oyebola Okunogbe & Fabrizio Santoro

Tax revenue in many low-income countries is inadequate for funding investments in public goods and human capital. While tax systems have been adopting new technologies to improve tax collection for many years, limitations to in-person interactions due to COVID-19 have further highlighted the role of information technology in tax mobilisation. This paper examines the potential…

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October 2021

There and Back Again: The Making of Uganda’s Mobile Money Tax

by Adrienne Lees & Doris Akol

Mobile money is widely seen as a powerful tool for enhancing financial inclusion and, potentially, improving the economic well-being of the poor. As the mobile money sector, and its turnover, have grown, certain governments have increasingly viewed mobile money transactions as a potentially convenient tax handle. The resulting tax measures are often controversial and draw…

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July 2021

There and Back Again: The Making of Uganda’s Mobile Money Tax

by Doris Akol & Adrienne Lees

This paper evaluates the appropriateness of the tax policymaking process that led to the introduction, and the later adaptation, of a tax on mobile money transactions in Uganda in 2018. We examine the unusual source of the proposal, how this particular tax diverged from the usual tax policymaking process, and whether certain key stakeholders were…

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