Gender and Tax

There is a limited, but growing body of literature on the gender effects of taxation. Most of the studies are from the global north and relate to details of direct personal income tax policies and indirect taxes with a small but growing body of work focused in the Global South, primarily exploring indirect, small, and…

This paper explores how tax collection is experienced differently by female and male market traders in two Nigerian states. Based on a survey of 451 market traders in 12 markets and ethnographic research in four markets, two main findings emerged from the study – the benefits of having female tax collectors to reduce incidences of…

This 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…

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…

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),…

This ICTD Research in Brief is a two-page summary of ICTD Working paper 89 by Marius Siebert and Anna Mbise. Are taxation systems in Africa biased against women? This is a hard question to answer and there is very little literature on the topic. Gender biases of personal income tax systems in developed countries have been well…

Tax collection has historically – in Africa and elsewhere – been collected almost entirely by men, partly reflecting patterns of authority and privilege in society, and partly owing to the traditionally coercive and confrontational approaches used. The situation is changing, with women entering the profession in increasing numbers, in part because of changes in the…

This ICTD Research in Brief is a two-page summary of ICTD Working paper 87 by Vanessa van den Boogaard. This series is aimed at policy makers, tax administrators, fellow researchers and anyone else who is big on interest and short on time. In recent years, activists and policy-oriented researchers have begun to explore how tax…

In this paper we examine market taxation in Dar es Salaam from a gender perspective. We do not find any evidence of gender bias in the way market traders are taxed, but we do find a major gender issue that we did not expect – toilet fees. Female traders pay up to 18 times more…

This paper considers how men and women in eastern and northern Sierra Leone interact differently with formal and informal revenue collection. It argues that the literature on tax and gender equity needs to be expanded in low-income countries to pay greater attention to the ways that citizens pay for public services in practice. It shows…