Tax amnesties have taken centre stage as a compliance tool in recent years. The OECD estimates that since 2009 tax amnesties in 40 jurisdictions have resulted in the collection of an additional €102 billion in tax revenue. A number of African countries have introduced tax amnesties in the last decade, including Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa…
Read moreThis paper predicts the fiscal and public health outcomes from a change in the excise tax structure for cigarettes in Ghana. More than 5,000 people are killed by diseases caused by tobacco every year in Ghana (Tobacco Atlas 2018). Currently the country has a unitary tax administration approach, with a uniform ad valorem tax structure…
Read moreThis paper examines the effect of intergovernmental fiscal transfers on the fiscal behaviour of local governments in Ethiopia for the period 2004-2018. The empirical findings suggest that central government grants bolster state-level employment and expenditure. However, grants from the central government to states do not crowd out state-level revenue collection. Hence, this paper argues that…
Read moreThe rate of occurrence of tax evasion is higher in Uganda than in the rest of East Africa. Where the taxpayer has latitude to decide whether or not to be compliant, as in the case of income taxes, Ugandans seem to be less compliant than other East Africans. Uganda collects less in domestic taxes than…
Read moreWe currently know very little about the taxation of professionals in Africa – scholarly work on this group of taxpayers is scant. The little research that does exist is located within the literature on the taxation of the ‘hard-to-tax’, a term in tax evasion literature that refers to farmers, small and medium-sized enterprises, and professionals….
Read moreIn 2013 the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in conjunction with other development partners, introduced the Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool (TADAT) to aid assessment of the performance of tax administrations around the world. The first TADAT assessment of Uganda’s tax administration was conducted in 2015, and the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) resolved to adopt the…
Read moreThis study explores how small business owners talk about their tax responsibility, especially in non-enabling institutional contexts. It identifies two main types of tax responsibility discourses amongst these business owners: (1) duty-based and (2) rights-based. The duty-based talks see taxation primarily as the citizens’ responsibility to governments, which should always be fulfilled unconditionally, while rights-based…
Read moreWe lack good indicators of the quality of national tax administrations, especially for low-income countries. The situation is, however, improving. Through the relatively new TADAT process (Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool), an increasing number of national tax administrations are receiving scores from teams of peer reviewers on how well they perform in nine key functions….
Read moreUganda was among the first African countries to embrace a decentralised system of government in the 1990s. The objective of this policy was to bring services closer to the people while at the same time enhancing local participation and democracy. The success of decentralisation was, however, greatly dependent on the amount of funds and other…
Read moreRevenue administrations collect large amounts of data on individuals and firms in the course of their work. Increasingly, this data is digitised. The use of digital technologies has the potential to greatly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of tax administration, by: Reducing the cost of routine operations for both taxpayer and tax collector; Reducing the…
Read moreAfrican governments are increasingly seeking to improve tax compliance in the pursuit of domestic revenue sources. Despite this trend, there is limited understanding of value added tax (VAT) compliance in Africa. In Ethiopia, increased VAT compliance is essential for the government to meet its ambitious domestic revenue goals. Therefore, we surveyed 652 Ethiopian VAT-registered businesses…
Read moreThe tax compliance behaviour of the public sector has been largely neglected in the tax literature. Other than appearing in tax laws as taxpayers, in practice the compliance strategies employed by revenue authorities do not sufficiently cater to government agencies. Enforcement of tax payments on these agencies is generally perceived to be a difficult undertaking…
Read more