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Publications

Showing 12-23 of 415 publications
March 2022

Co-financing community-driven development through informal taxation: Evidence from south-central Somalia

by Vanessa van den Boogaard & Fabrizio Santoro

Community contributions are often required as part of community-driven development programs, with contributions encouraged through matching grants. However, little remains known about the impact of matching grants or the implications of requiring community contributions—also known as informal taxation. We explore this research gap through a randomized control trial of a matching grant program in Gedo…

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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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March 2022

Tax and Governance in the Context of Scarce Revenues: Inefficient Tax Collection and its Implications in Rural West Africa

by Vanessa van den Boogaard & Rachel Beach

In recent years, domestic and international policy attention has often focused on broadening the tax base in order to include a greater share of the population in the ‘tax net’. This is based, in part, on the hope that the expansion of taxation will result in positive ‘governance dividends’ for taxpayers. However, the implications of…

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February 2022

Taliban Taxation in Afghanistan: (2006-2021)

by Rahmatullah Amiri & Ashley Jackson

Before taking control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban had developed a remarkably state-like revenue collection system throughout the country. This ICTD research explores how that came to be, and what factors shaped the various forms of Taliban taxation. Drawing primarily on fieldwork from Helmand, Ghazni and Kunduz provinces, this paper explores in depth…

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February 2022
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Innovations in Tax Compliance: Building Trust, Navigating Politics, and Tailoring Reform

by Roel Dom, Anna Custers, Stephen Davenport & Wilson Prichard

Recent decades have seen important progress in strengthening country tax systems. Yet many areas of reform have remained stubbornly resistant to major improvements. Overall, revenue collection still falls short of that needed for effective governance and service delivery. Tax collection is too often riddled with high rates of evasion among large corporations and the rich…

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February 2022

What’s the catch? Fiscal Policies for Fisheries in five African Countries

by Giovanni Occhiali

The taxation of fisheries: rationale and overarching debates. Many low-income countries (LICs) have long struggled to increase their domestic revenue mobilisation, which is often seen as a necessary step to achieve a more sustained economic development. A wider fiscal space can lead to more funds being available for social spending and infrastructure investment, both of…

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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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January 2022

The Rise of China and Contestation in Global Tax Governance

by Martin Hearson & Rasmus Corlin Christensen

This paper examines the relationship between China’s changing economy and its global business tax diplomacy. Three trends dominate: China is becoming a net capital exporter, emerging as a major consumer market, and is home to digital giant firms including Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba. The resulting drive to promote both ‘going out’ and ‘bringing in’ foreign…

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January 2022

Enabling Tax Bargaining: Supporting More Meaningful Tax Transparency and Taxpayer Engagement in Ghana and Sierra Leone

by Vanessa van den Boogaard, Wilson Prichard, Rachel Beach & Fariya Mohiuddin

While there is increasing evidence that taxation can contribute to greater government responsiveness and accountability, such positive outcomes are not guaranteed. If the environment does not enable tax bargaining, there is a risk that taxation will amount to little more than enforced extraction. We consider how such enabling environments may be fostered and identify specific…

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December 2021

The Politics of Taxing Multinational Firms in a Digital Age

by Martin Hearson & Margarita Gelepithis

Taxing multinationals is politically difficult because of the structural power of mobile firms within the global economy, and this structural power is expected to increase in the digital age. Recently however there has been a breakdown in the international corporate tax consensus that structured tax competition over the past century. A new norm of international…

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