A demand-supply framework has been developed and applied to Tanzania to explore the link between democratisation, economic liberalisation and the use of tax exemptions to fund political parties’ electoral campaigns. In Tanzania, the demand for this type of money has increased since one-party rule was abolished in 1992. This led to reduced state subsidies to…
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 moreTransitioning to an electronic system for tax administration and collection is a welcome development in countries that have hitherto faced difficulty in raising tax revenue. Countries like those in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, account for about 16 percent of GDP from tax revenue, while Nigeria records 1.48 percent of its GDP from tax revenue (World…
Read morePublic finance theory suggests that property tax is an ideal local tax. But it’s also a ‘data-hungry’ tax, making it difficult and costly to administer properly— especially at the local government level where capacity, skills and resources are often lacking. Given its high data demands, property tax administration lends itself to the application of modern…
Read moreHow can governments and tax authorities best encourage taxpayers to be compliant, i.e. to be more honest in declaring information about their tax obligations and paying what is due? Unfortunately, one common response, rather misleadingly termed ‘education’, is to preach at taxpayers: to tell them that it is their duty to pay taxes, and threaten…
Read moreThis paper presents the findings of a study on gender-based taxation differences among market traders in two Nigerian states. At a high level, no significant differences were found between female and male traders in the markets visited in terms of tax payments, payments for market services and tax increases. However, a closer look at the…
Read moreThough traditionally thought of as the preserve of technical experts—lawyers, economists and accountants—the study of taxation has recently attracted growing attention, with mounting recognition that taxation is fundamentally political, and lies near the core of the relationship between states and citizens. The first, and most common, question about the politics of taxation is: what are…
Read moreOur research explores the factors that drive the ways in which small business owners perceive and use the Integrated Tax Administration System (ITAS) in Nigeria. We surveyed nearly 500 small businesses. We apply logistic regression analysis to the survey data to determine which among a range of factors – relating to the ownership of businesses,…
Read moreThis paper focuses on the perceptions of a turnover-based presumptive tax system in Ethiopia. It mainly focuses on taxpayers’ perceptions of fairness, simplicity and administrative capacity. In this study, fairness has been assessed based on seven dimensions, namely exchange fairness, procedural fairness, horizontal fairness, vertical fairness, inter-group fairness, time-related fairness and compliance fairness. Exchange fairness…
Read moreWith the first implementation of e-filing by the US in 1986, many countries in Europe, Asia and Africa followed suit. E-filing for certain tax payments was introduced at the federal level in Nigeria in 2013. However, none of the State Boards of Internal Revenue in Northwest Nigeria have made the system available for the collection…
Read moreAfrican colonial history suggests that British colonial rule may have undermined state centralisation due to legacies of ethnic segregation and stronger executive constraints. Using micro-data from anglophone and francophone countries in sub-Saharan Africa, we find that anglophone citizens are less likely to identify themselves in national terms (relative to ethnic terms). To address endogeneity concerns,…
Read morePurpose Inter-organisational cooperation in revenue collection has received limited attention in the tax administration literature. Recent experiences from Tanzania offer a unique opportunity to examine opportunities and challenges facing such cooperation between central and local government agencies in a developing country context. The administration of property taxes (PT) in Tanzania has been oscillating between decentralised…
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