Working Paper 230
This paper examines how Zambia adopts and implements international tax standards that are set or developed by various multilateral institutions. The study is part of the comparative ICTD research project ‘Comparative Perspectives on International Tax from the Global South’. The paper establishes that the main players and factors in the adoption process are the government itself, the Zambia Revenue Authority, civil society organisations, the political environment, the state of the economy, investor demands and the country’s membership of multilateral institutions.
The paper observes that, in most cases, Zambia is a laggard in the adoption and implementation of these standards. This slowness is attributable mainly to a lack of awareness of the revenue benefits of a particular international tax standard, technical and technological incapacity, bureaucratic processes and lack of a guiding policy document on international taxation. Further, where a measure has been adopted, domestication and maintenance of the measure have been problematic. Tax treaty maintenance has particularly been poor, with the country still being bound by outdated treaties.
While the country is making great strides in building tax administration capacity, not much has been done in building judicial capacity. Both the Tax Appeals Tribunal and the higher courts face difficult challenges when handling international taxation matters, particularly transfer pricing.
