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.
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Publications:
There are substantial differences in the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and policy responses to it between high- and low-income countries. While evidence on the former is growing, there remain more unanswered questions on the latter. This paper addresses this gap by providing insights on the impact of the pandemic in Rwanda, based on firm-level…
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…
Recent decades have seen important progress in strengthening country tax systems. Yet many areas of reform have remained stubbornly resistant to major improvements. Overall, revenue collection still falls short of that needed for effective governance and service delivery. Tax collection is too often riddled with high rates of evasion among large corporations and the rich…
New digital technologies are now being widely used in Africa and lower-income countries (LICs). This has had an impact on tax administration, which has been increasingly digitised. Specifically Digital Financial Services (DFS) and digital IDs can improve tax administration. They have the potential to identify taxpayers more easily, communicate with them better, enforce and monitor…
Digital financial services (DFS) have rapidly expanded across Africa and other low-income countries. At the same time, low-income countries face strong pressures to increase domestic resource mobilisation, and major challenges in taxing the digital economy. A growing number are therefore advancing or considering new taxes on DFS. These have generated much debate and there are…
Tax revenue in many low-income countries is inadequate for funding investments in public goods and human capital. While tax systems have been adopting new technologies to improve tax collection for many years, limitations to in-person interactions due to COVID-19 have further highlighted the role of information technology in tax mobilisation. This paper examines the potential…
This paper examines the relationship between China’s changing economy and its global business tax diplomacy. Three trends dominate: China is becoming a net capital exporter, emerging as a major consumer market, and is home to digital giant firms including Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba. The resulting drive to promote both ‘going out’ and ‘bringing in’ foreign…
There is a widespread perception that taxing in sub-Saharan Africa has been and remains fraught with problems or government failure. This is not generally true. For more than a century, colonial administrations and independent states have steadily developed the capacity to routinely collect more substantial revenues than one might expect in a low-income region. The…
While much knowledge is being generated on the impact of the pandemic, we still know very little on its implications on taxation in low-income countries. Yet, tax is crucial to fund crisis response and recovery, in addition to broader development plans and expanded government expenditure. This paper starts addressing this gap using a unique dataset…
Non-filing, the failure to submit a tax declaration, is a widespread phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa and produces detrimental fiscal effects, from impaired revenue mobilisation to inequality. Non-filing has been largely unexplored in the public finance literature, which focuses mostly on active filers. This paper sheds light on the determinants of non-filing, building on neoclassical and behavioural theories,…
Blogs:
Ghana’s Electronic Transfer Levy will come into effect on 1 May 2022 according to the Ghana Revenue Authority. But can it be implemented legally on the proposed date and, beyond that, how is it going to work? In the last few days, the GRA issued some Guidelines aimed at clarifying the scope and the implementation…
Ghanaian local governments – metropolitan, municipal, and district assemblies (MMDAs) – face several challenges preventing them from raising more revenue from property taxes. These challenges include limited access to information about properties such as location, ownership and accurate valuations. As part of its programmes, VNG International (the International Cooperation Agency of the Association of Netherlands…
Borno State, in north-eastern Nigeria, has faced intractable security challenges in the last decade that has led to the destruction of businesses, livelihoods, property and public infrastructure. As a result, real estate in the capital of Maiduguri and other peaceful areas has seen an increase in demand. Normally, a real estate boom would lead to increased…
Research Projects:
Many governments are considering taxing digital financial services (DFS), but to tax them properly we need to understand what enables or prevents people using DFS, and what impact DFS usage has. Our Evidence Gap Map (EGM) brings together all the evidence-based research available on these enablers, barriers and impacts. An EGM serves to pinpoint where…
This research has been conducted in partnership with the World Bank. The paper examines the potential of technology in transforming tax administration by helping to identify the tax base, facilitate compliance, and monitor compliance. It also identifies possible limitations to the use of technology arising from inadequate connectivity infrastructure, lack of adoption (or resistance) by…
This research assignment focuses on exploring the potential role of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) on taxation regimes and RAs in developing countries. This research will outline the concept of CBDC and its various potential designs, an overview of current testing or CBDC implementation plans across the developed and developing world, possible taxation use cases…
Building on background work from Arewa (forthcoming) and connecting with recent evidence on gaps in URA administrative data (Mayega et al 2019, 2021) this study attempts to address the three following interrelated questions: How is the integration with other public institutions’ databases taking place in Uganda? Which are the challenges both URA and other institutions…
This research will primarily seek to answer how the Togo Revenue Authority (OTR) can harness the potential of DFS to improve tax administration in the country?
This study explores how digital payment data can be used to solve tax compliance challenges in Rwanda by identifying the potential that digital transactions can have on tax compliance, perceptions, and the tax administration’s efficacy.
This research project plans to investigate whether and how the rapid expansion of mobile financial services (mobile money, mobile credit, mobile savings) influences domestic resource mobilisation in emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs).
This research project will assess the extent of the adoption of these technologies among states’ taxing authorities and how the data from these technologies is being used in strengthening tax administration effectively.
This paper spurs from the interest of the Eswatini Revenue Authority (partners in the study) and evaluates the impact of the mandate of electronic filing for income taxes, as implemented in Eswatini in September 2020 in response to the COVID emergency. By relying on a rich set of taxpayer-level administrative data from the revenue authority,…
This is the first report in a series focusing on digital payments and ID technologies. It will examine how tax administrations use digital payment systems – including mobile money technologies – to bolster tax collection and improve the provision of key taxpayer services. Relying on a review of existing evidence, it will also assess the…