Working Paper
The effects of personal income tax reform on employees’ taxable income in Uganda
We evaluate a major personal income tax reform in Uganda that came into effect in 2012–13. The reform increased the tax-free lower threshold, increased tax rates for higher incomes, and introduced an additional highest tax band. Using the universe of...
Working Paper
Simulating personal income tax in South Africa using administrative data and survey data
In this paper we explore South Africa’s personal income tax system using two microsimulation models. The first, SAMOD, simulates personal income tax and social benefits using a dataset derived from the nationally representative National Income...
Working Paper
The macroeconomic effect of fiscal policy in South Africa
This paper analyses the macroeconomic effect of legislated personal income tax changes in South Africa over the 1996–2019 period. We identify personal income tax shocks using a narrative approach and incorporate these shocks in a proxySVAR model. Our...
Blog
Co-creation for fair and efficient taxation: Research recommendations to improve policies
by
Maria Jouste, Tina Kaidu Barugahara, Nicholas Musoke
August 2021
How can we determine the taxation of wage earners or multinational corporations in a fair manner? Will simplifying tax administration help increase...
Policy Brief
Reducing inequalities in South Africa
South Africa has the highest rate of measured inequality in the world. Often thought to be a legacy of the apartheid system, inequality in South Africa has stubbornly persisted. South Africa’s position as highest inequality country in the world has...
Working Paper
Taking stock of South African income inequality
We synthesize the findings from several recent papers on South Africa’s very high income inequality. These papers use new datasets—including income tax data—and new empirical methods to investigate the drivers of household income and individual...
Working Paper
Taxpayer response to greater progressivity
We evaluate a major personal income tax reform in Uganda that came into effect in 2012–13, contributing to the scarce literature on the effects of personal income tax reform on employees’ income in a low-income country in Africa. The reform increased...
Working Paper
Differential bunching impacts across the income distribution
We investigate the behavioural responses of individual taxpayers to changes in marginal personal income tax rates applying empirical bunching methodology to tax administrative data from Zambia over the period from 2014 to 2021. We find evidence for...
Technical Note
The Uganda Revenue Authority Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) data
This technical note describes the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) data covering financial years 2013/14 to 2021/22. PAYE is paid by an employer who withholds personal income tax on employees’ wages and other employment incomes...
Working Paper
Top incomes’ impacts on inequality, growth, and social welfare
This paper evaluates the impacts of combining household surveys with income tax return files, in terms of growth, inequality, and social welfare in Brazil from 2007 to 2015. This exercise holds the promise of adding more realistic top income values...
Working Paper
The effect of top incomes on inequality in South Africa
South Africa exhibits extreme levels of income inequality and is ranked as one of the most unequal countries in the world. In order to measure these severe levels of inequality, it matters how we account for the different parts of the income...
Presentation
Jukka Pirttilä on personal income tax reform in Uganda
Jukka Pirttilä, UNU-WIDER Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow, gives a presentation at the Tax for Development webinar series on 5 April 2022 (CET). The webinar series is hosted by Chr. Michelsen Institute. The topic of Pirttilä's presentation is...
Tue, 5 April 2022
Online,
Oslo,
Norway
Past event
Working Paper
Taxpayer responsiveness to taxation
The author applies the bunching methodology to South African administrative tax data over the period from 2011 to 2017 to investigate the responsiveness of individual taxpayers to changes in marginal personal income tax rates.She finds significant...
Working Paper
Minimum wage and tax kink effects in the formal and informal sector in Zambia
This paper explores two policy interventions in Zambia, a minimum wage hike in 2018 and an upward revision in the first kink in the progressive income tax schedule in 2017, to examine and compare the impact of minimum wage and tax kink changes on...