Tax Administration and Compliance
Many of the challenges low-income countries face in mobilising domestic resources are related to tax administration as much as tax policy. Our research on this theme encompasses all aspects of tax administration, from technology adoption, to data management and strategies for collecting revenue from different types of taxpayers. Tax compliance is a key focus, as low-income countries struggle with widespread evasion, corruption, and limited administrative capacity. Our research on compliance includes survey-based studies of taxpayers’ perceptions and attitudes, case studies, and large-scale field experiments.
Publications:
This 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…
Value 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…
In 2013 the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in conjunction with other development partners, introduced the Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool (TADAT) to aid assessment of the performance of tax administrations around the world. The first TADAT assessment of Uganda’s tax administration was conducted in 2015, and the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) resolved to adopt the…
Tax evasion is typically very hard, if not impossible, to measure. In the case of trade flows however, it is possible to capture it thanks to “missing imports”: the difference between the total value of exports recorded by country A to country B and the total value of imports of country B from country A….
This paper presents a conceptual framework for developing more effective approaches to tax reform and compliance. The framework proposes that by combining complementary investments in enforcement, facilitation, and trust, reformers can not only strengthen enforced compliance but can also (a) encourage quasi-voluntary compliance, (b) generate sustainable political support for reform, and (c) create conditions that…
It is well documented in the literature that developing countries raise less tax revenue as a share of their economy than their developed counterparts. Part of this gap can be explained by the relatively higher tax evasion in the former. Recent literature shows that increasing the availability of information reduces evasion, by increasing the probability…
This 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…
We lack good indicators of the quality of national tax administrations, especially for low-income countries. The situation is, however, improving. Through the relatively new TADAT process (Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool), an increasing number of national tax administrations are receiving scores from teams of peer reviewers on how well they perform in nine key functions….
Tax is a major source of government revenue. Many countries prioritise mobilising domestic resources to finance government spending. However, many factors influence the revenue generated by taxation, including the population’s level of compliance with tax expectations. A country’s ability to raise funds from tax depends on the level of tax compliance. Tax compliance refers to…
Revenue administrations collect large amounts of data on individuals and firms in the course of their work. Increasingly, this data is digitised. The use of digital technologies has the potential to greatly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of tax administration, by: Reducing the cost of routine operations for both taxpayer and tax collector; Reducing the…
Blogs:
At the request of the ICTD, Professor Richard Bird generously agreed to review the new World Bank publication Innovations in Tax Compliance, which proposes a new framework to help guide the design of tax reform efforts. Richard was the founding Chair of the Advisory Group of the ICTD, and is a long term advisor to…
See here for a response to Professor Bird’s critique by the World Bank framework’s lead author and ICTD Research Director Wilson Prichard. Innovations in Tax Compliance, a recent World Bank working paper, undertakes two tasks. First, it reviews the rapidly growing theoretical and especially empirical literature on how countries can improve tax compliance and, not…
The government of Kaduna State, Nigeria, has been working to increase tax collection by broadening the tax base, investing in technology and modernisation, and implementing large-scale policy and administrative reform. These efforts have substantially improved the business environment and increased revenue collection. Yet, there is still significant room to boost voluntary tax compliance. At the…
Research Projects:
In 2016 the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) conducted a taxpayer survey in collaboration with GIZ. The survey included 1,294 small and medium taxpayers (60% in Kigali, 40% from all other districts) and the main goal was to investigate taxpayers’ knowledge of the tax system, opinions on taxes/fees, public use of tax revenues, attitudes and tax…
The proposed research will answer three research questions: (1) Do regions that have historically received more tax revenue have better tax morale? (2) What type of tax allocation in the form of public service provision increases tax morale? (3) Can oil producing regions turn the use of revenue from the 13% fund into higher tax…
Domestic revenue mobilization is a priority for many SSA countries. Yet, low tax compliance constitutes a major challenge to this drive. Improving tax compliance will require an understanding of the underlying factors influencing a taxpayer’s decision to either pay taxes or not. However, little is known about tax compliance behaviour in most SSA countries; insights…
There is now an extensive body of literature looking into the factors that influence tax compliance. These studies, loosely known as tax morale studies, employ various tools to understand why some people pay taxes while others do not. In some cases, the studies are gender disaggregated, thereby enabling us to understand how men and women…
Improving the state’s ability to tax effectively is central to the development process. However, tax collections (as a percentage of GDP) are low in most developing countries — in India the ratio is about 15% — and non-compliance is widely seen as an important problem. A common strategy to evade taxes is to establish shell…
This study will examine tax compliance differential between female-owned and male-owned business enterprises in Ethiopia, particularly located in Addis Ababa. Collecting survey data on 400 medium and large size firms, we will estimate the log-odds-ratios from a fixed effect logit model to describe the probability of being tax compliant and apply a generalized Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition…
The past decade has witnessed a surge in international interest in the importance of ‘tax morale’ as a key component of strategies for strengthening tax compliance in developing countries. This focus has been long overdue, and there is now broad research evidence that strengthening tax morale can have important benefits in encouraging ‘quasi-voluntary’ tax compliance….
Citizens’ tax morale can enhance actual compliance behavior and provide governments with the necessary revenue. This study aims to identify the various factors that shape citizens’ attitudes towards taxation and suggest ways to improve compliance through positive motivations. The 2013 5th round Afrobarometer survey conducted in Ethiopia is our main source of data. A sub…
Geographic information systems (GIS) are underused as a tool for analysis of tax evasion and addressing compliance problems. This research aims to show how geospatial data can be harnessed to identify and estimate noncompliance of unregistered taxpayers and under reported income by combining geospatial information and taxpayer data to indirectly measure taxable income. The information…
Developing countries typically face with low tax compliance both at the extensive and intensive margins. In the presence of weak enforcement capacity by state institutions, leveraging information diffusion through firm networks may be a cost-effective way of improving tax compliance. Senegal is confronted with two major challenges in terms of tax compliance. Firstly, the tax…