Informal Tax
While research has historically focused on formal systems of taxation and user fees, there is mounting evidence of the importance of “informal” taxation for average taxpayers in much of Africa. While lying outside of statutory laws, the “tax-like” payments – which include informal user fees, informal contributions to community development projects, and informal payments to both state and non-state officials – impose a significant burden on many taxpayers, while playing a critical role in financing local public goods and services and shaping broader local governance. Our research aims to map the extent, composition and experiences of these payments, and to understand their implications for livelihoods, fiscal decentralization, service delivery and broader local governance and reform.
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Publications:
Community contributions are often required as part of community-driven development (CDD) programmes, with payment encouraged through matching grants. However, little remains known about the impact of matching grants, or the implications of requiring community contributions in order for communities to receive development funding. This paper describes research where we partner with two non-governmental organisations (NGOs)…
This briefing explores the Covid-19 pandemic, which has raised twin challenges for public revenue around the world. Governments have undertaken huge expenses to finance medical responses and social protection programmes. At the same time, tax collection is decreasing as a consequence of both pandemic-related tax breaks and a dip in economic activity and trade. These…
Most people in low-income countries contribute substantially to the financing of local public goods through informal revenue generation (IRG). However, very little is known about how IRG works in practice. We produce novel evidence on the magnitude and regressivity of IRG and its relationship with the state in a fragile context, Somalia. We rely on…
The importance of tenure security for development and wellbeing is often reduced to questions about how titles can guarantee rights, overlooking the contested and layered nature of property rights themselves. We use the case of Lagos to analyse property rights as ‘analogue’ rather than ‘digital’ in nature – things that only exist by degree, where…
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…
In low-income countries, citizens often pay ‘taxes’ that differ substantially from what is required by statute. These non-statutory taxes are central to financing both local public goods and maintaining informal governance institutions. This study captures the incidence of informal taxation and taxpayer perspectives on these payments. We find, first, that informal taxes are a prevalent…
Recent research has cast light on the variety of informal payments and practices that govern the day-to-day interactions between traders and customs agents at border posts in low-income countries. Building on this literature, this paper draws on survey and qualitative evidence in an effort to explore which groups are most advantaged and disadvantaged by the…
This ICTD Research in Brief is a two-page summary of ICTD Working Paper 74 by Vanessa van den Boogaard, Wilson Prichard and Samuel Jibao. This series is aimed at policy makers, tax administrators, fellow researchers and anyone else who is big on interest and short on time. Governance practices in peripheral regions of low-income countries…
The notion of tax equity raises difficult questions. There is no single right definition of the term, and it is very hard to measure precisely the distributional effects of taxation and fiscal activities, especially in low-income countries. This brief seeks to clarify definitions, evidence and points of potential disagreement when it comes to tax equity, and puts forward eight key elements of a potential agenda for equitable taxation.
Blogs:
Across Nigeria, a journey through rural communities and interaction with community members will expose you to the prevalence of self-financed and managed community development projects. The benefits of those projects completed through informal taxation to the people of Nigeria cannot be overemphasised, though many scholars and tax administrators are not aware or pay little attention…
In recent years, the legalisation of cannabis – initially for medical use, and increasingly for recreational use – has become a common policy talking point. But can legalised cannabis production become a new revenue source for low and middle-income countries? Canada and a range of states in the US have made headlines from legalisation initiatives…
While many economists and politicians have begun to talk seriously about using wealth taxes to raise government revenue and curb rising inequality, one in every four people globally are already subject to a similar taxation model called Zakat. In the form of Zakat, Muslims around the world who possess wealth over a particular threshold are…
Research Projects:
This project is an exploratory and interpretative piece of research looking at patterns of Taliban taxation to piece together an explanation of their practices. This research is guided by two main, inter-related questions: 1. How and why do the Taliban collect taxes, and how does this vary across areas under Taliban influence? 2. What does…
This study will look at whether abolishing school fees would eventually result in less or more inequality in access to high quality education and, ultimately, have a positive or negative incidence on the reproduction of inequality more generally.
A study to establish a solid understanding of one of the components of Tax and Gender in the DRC. The main objective is to understand the tax collectors’ attitude and behaviour as well as that of the vendors (women and men) while collecting tax (taxe d’étalage) in the formal and informal markets in Kinshasa City…
This research project supports data collection on shifting informal tax obligations and perceptions of tax obligations in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis. It is exploring zakat contributions and perceptions of zakat and tax obligations in three case studies across South Asia and North Africa—Pakistan, Morocco, and Egypt. The research project focuses on the period…
This research project explores informal taxation along the Dimapur-Imphal highway in conflict affected Northeast India. It seeks to map and explain the type of taxation (progressive, regressive etc), the manner of this collection (ad-hoc or regularised), the levels of perceived coercion, and the variations in these across armed groups, focusing on the taxes taken from…
In this project, we aim to investigate the role ethnicity plays in shaping attitudes toward taxation and the state. In particular, does ethnicity or other vendor-specific attributes attenuate (or reinforce) the effect of improved information on formal tax compliance and pro-tax attitudes? The proposed qualitative research builds upon and is informed by novel findings that…
One of the foremost challenges to state-building in weak states is the collection of sufficient revenue for the government to supply public goods. If weak states seek to expand the size of their tax base and the overall revenue collected, can improved information or other appeals boost pro-tax attitudes and formal tax compliance? This project…