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Publications

Showing 24-35 of 275 publications
April 2019

Local Government Property Tax Administration and Collaboration with Central Government: Case Studies of Kiambu, Laikipia and Machakos Counties, Kenya

Rose Wanjiru, Anne Wanyagathi Maina & Eldah Onsomu with Graeme Stewart-Wilson

Property taxes are a major source of revenue at sub-national levels in most countries, but their administration is complex, and in most cases the process involves both national and sub-national governments. In Kenya, county governments have legislative authority to levy property taxes and the responsibility to finance some of the cost of the services they…

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April 2019

Tax Administration Reforms: Lessons from Georgia and Uganda

Margaret Magumba

Several tax revenue administrations have implemented significant reforms along their journeys with the aim of attaining higher tax revenue collections, improved taxpayer compliance and more efficient service delivery. The results defer from country to country depending on the nature of the reforms implemented and the circumstances surrounding them. This paper analyses and contrasts the tax…

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April 2019

Where the Gap Lay: Presumptive Income Tax Assessment for Small and Micro Enterprises in Addis Ababa City Administration

Amanuel Mekonnen Workneh & Endalkachew Mulugeta Baileyegn with Graeme Stewart-Wilson

This study is focused on the presumptive tax reassessment of small and micro enterprises (SMEs) in Addis Ababa City Administration that took place in 2017. The reassessment process was based on average daily revenue estimates calculated by teams of assessors and validated by a series of committees. The release of the reassessment results in 2017…

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March 2019

Expensive to be a Female Trader: The Reality of Taxation of Flea Market Traders in Zimbabwe

Waziona Ligomeka

Interest is growing in taxing small-scale traders in developing countries in both the academic literature and the policy arena. This interest is due to the large and often growing portion of small-scale businesses in many developing economies, which is eroding their formal tax bases. Zimbabwe is slowly, but increasingly taxing this sector. In 2005 the…

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March 2019

An Analysis of Discrepancies in Taxpayers’ VAT Declarations in Rwanda

Giulia Mascagni, Denis Mukama & Fabrizio Santoro

In recent years, one of the most important developments in African tax administration has been the widespread adoption of value added tax (VAT). A key feature of VAT is its self-enforcement mechanism, which incentivises buyers to request a receipt and claim refunds on VAT paid. This should in principle go against the seller’s incentive to…

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March 2019

Expensive To Be a Female Trader: the Reality of Taxation of Flea Market Traders in Zimbabwe

Waziona Ligomeka

The proportion of economic activities that are categorised as informal or small-scale is unusually high in Zimbabwe. Given the depressed state of the economy over an extended period, it is logical that the government is more actively taxing small-scale business activities. Specifically, in 2005 the government introduced a presumptive tax (a tax on gross income),…

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March 2019

An Analysis of Discrepancies in Taxpayers’ VAT Declarations in Rwanda

Giulia Mascagni, Denis Mukama & Fabrizio Santoro

This report provides a descriptive analysis of discrepancies resulting from matching different value added tax (VAT) data sources in the Rwanda Revenue Authority database. VAT returns are declared by businesses of all sizes and types, from companies to individual traders. Internal discrepancy is the gap between different data sources, namely VAT declaration and VAT annexes,…

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March 2019

Teach to Comply? Evidence from a Taxpayer Education Programme in Rwanda

Giulia Mascagni, Fabrizio Santoro & Denis Mukama

African revenue authorities developed a growing interest in tax education as a key driver of compliance and in the context of a modern approach to tax administration (Mascagni and Santoro, 2018). Indeed, poor tax knowledge has a number of potentially serious implications. Firstly, it is likely to affect compliance. On the one hand, uninformed taxpayers…

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February 2019

Teach to Comply? Evidence from a Taxpayer Education Programme in Rwanda

Giulia Mascagni, Fabrizio Santoro & Denis Mukama

The role of taxpayer education in improving tax compliance has been largely unexplored in the literature. This paper starts to fill this gap by providing the first rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of taxpayer education on knowledge, perceptions, and compliance, which took place in Rwanda. Our analysis is based on a unique dataset that combines…

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February 2019

Taxing Multinational Business in Lower-Income Countries: Economics, Politics and Social Responsibility

Michael C. Durst

The world’s lower-income countries face an urgent need for public revenue to build social and economic infrastructure. These countries, however, face a dilemma in seeking to tax the income of multinational companies operating within their borders. On the one hand, because lower-income countries face substantial limitations on their ability to raise revenue from broad-based taxes…

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