Nil-filing refers to taxpayers who report zero on all fields of their tax declaration. It is a largely ignored phenomenon in the tax literature, despite being well known to tax administrators. There is almost no evidence on the characteristics of nil-filers and the reasons for their apparently puzzling behaviour. This paper sheds light on this…
Read moreThe extractive sector is of primary importance to African states. Of the 54 countries on the continent, 20 are considered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to be rich in natural resources. These are countries whose natural resources account for more than 25 per cent of total exports. All are sub-Saharan African countries: seven export…
Read moreFuel subsidies in Nigeria are enormous. At last estimate, the state subsidises gasoline to the tune of USD 3.9 billion — almost double the entire health budget. Subsidies exist because the government fixes the price of gasoline for consumers below the international price and uses government resources to pay for the difference. They were first…
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 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 could be in the midst of the biggest change to the way multinational companies are taxed in decades. In January 2019, over 130 developed and developing countries committed to ‘go beyond’ some of the fundamental principles that have underpinned cooperation on corporate taxation for a century (OECD 2019a). They opened negotiations to redistribute ‘taxing…
Read moreThe rapid growth of the digital economy in many African countries has led to concerns about whether their tax regimes are equipped to deal with this new phenomenon. The shift from a traditional bricks and mortar commercial environment to one that is electronic and information-based poses serious and substantial challenges to traditional tax regimes. African…
Read moreFuel subsidies in Nigeria are enormous. At last estimate, the state subsidises petrol to the tune of US$3.9 billion – almost double the entire health budget. Such subsidies come at great cost: the opportunity costs of such spending on other development objectives are large; the distribution of resources to the state governments is reduced; the…
Read moreEfforts to reform property tax systems in African cities tend to focus more on how to value properties for purposes of tax assessment than on how to better collect taxes due. The same is true of the literature on property tax reform. There is however reason to believe that a greater initial focus on improving…
Read moreValue Added Tax (VAT) has emerged as one of the main modes of raising tax revenue worldwide, but has significantly underperformed as a revenue source in African countries. To improve compliance, Tanzania has introduced Electronic Fiscal Devices (EFDs), which automatically transmit information about business transactions to the tax administration. However, VAT collection has not improved…
Read moreIn recent years, tax treaties concluded by sub-Saharan African countries have become more residence-based with fewer provisions allocating taxing rights to the source countries. This trend is observed in treaties signed with OECD countries in particular. For countries which are capital importers, as is the case with most African countries, this means that these countries…
Read moreA 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…
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