Despite South Africa’s need for inclusive economic growth, we find that the income trajectories of the rich continue to diverge from the rest of the income distribution. We combine household survey data and tax data (which, unlike household survey...
The IRP5 and IT3(a) tax data from the South African Revenue Service have been made available to researchers through a joint project between the South African Revenue Service, the National Treasury, and UNU-WIDER. In this paper, I explain how to use...
Monetary policy affects the real economy through various channels, including the interest rate, exchange rate, credit, and asset price channels. The credit channel has recently received considerable attention. Small firms are more sensitive to...
The identification of foreign firms and South African multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the CIT-IRP5 panel has proved to be a challenge for many researchers. The CIT-IRP5 panel contains variables indicating different thresholds that determine...
Based on tax records data from Ecuador, we analyse gender differences in top income groups from 2008 to 2017. Ecuador represents an interesting case as it shares many trends with other countries in the region in terms of women’s status in the labour...
Introduction: data for development Globally, one of the key factors associated with increasing use of data to inform policy-making has been the increased availability of new administrative data sources. In 2014, the National Treasury of South Africa...
Overall income inequality in South Africa is very high, and inequality generated in the labour market is a key driver of inequality.In this paper, I use the Post-Apartheid Labour Market Series, the General Household Surveys, and administrative tax...
This paper examines the relationship between monetary policy and wealth inequality in South Africa. We employed a unique database of tax administrative data which allowed us to account for individual heterogeneity. These tax data span from 2011 to...
Despite South Africa’s need for inclusive economic growth, we find that the top income percentiles continue to diverge from the rest of the income distribution. We compare household survey data and tax data (which, unlike household survey data...
This technical note is part of a series of technical notes describing the construction of the Government Revenue Dataset (GRD). This document specifically focuses on the composition of variables in the GRD (version August 2021) and across the...
This paper presents version 4.0 of the CIT-IRP5 firm-level panel dataset. Version 4.0 is the latest edition of the firm-level component of the combined administrative data using sources from the South African Revenue Service. We show that differences...
This technical note has been produced alongside a WIDER working paper assessing the effects on income inequality and income tax simulations of adjusting top incomes of employees in survey data based on administrative tax records in Ecuador. The paper...
This technical note is part of a series of technical notes describing the construction of the Government Revenue Dataset (GRD). We provide an overview of the underlying sources in the GRD and the criteria used in order to select data from them. In...
The availability of anonymized individual tax return data can contribute to a deeper understanding of the drivers behind the high levels of inequality and unemployment in South Africa. In the recent past, researchers have examined either payroll or...
Monetary policy is believed to have a disproportionate effect on firms, depending on their size. Financially constrained firms with limited access to capital markets are expected to be more sensitive to changes in interest rates; this is...
We use individual-level tax administrative data to estimate personal income inequality among the tax-compliant population in South Africa over the period 2011–21. Our results indicate that inequality of this population rose slightly over the period...
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...
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...
Uganda has one of the lowest corporate income tax collection rates in sub-Saharan Africa, while offering generous corporate tax incentives. It is unclear whether tax incentives achieve their objectives without primarily benefiting firms, potentially...
Top income under-coverage in developing countries not only leads to downward biased inequality indicators but might also affect the ex-ante evaluation of progressive tax reforms. We propose a simple adjustment to top incomes for formal employees (e.g...
We study the relationship between product market competition and labour market outcomes in South Africa. We combine firm-level data from tax records with individual-level data from the labour force survey. We estimate markups across sectors, and...
This technical note is the third in a series based on the UNU-WIDER Government Revenue Dataset (GRD). The preceding notes have described in detail the variables contained within the GRD and the source selection procedures. In this technical note, we...
We use income data from tax registers at the Uganda Revenue Authority from 2011 to 2017 to estimate top income inequality, focusing on the very top—the top 1, 0.1, and 0.01 per cent of the income distribution. The focus on the extreme top is...
This paper examines how formal firms have been impacted by and recovered from the pandemic by drawing on two distinct but complementary data sources. This is the first attempt to use both survey and tax administrative data to measure the initial...
This technical note describes the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) firm panel, which is constructed from administrative corporate income tax (CIT) returns and firm registration data for the financial years 2013/14–2019/20. The panel dataset contains...
The past four decades have seen marked improvements in the collection of domestic revenue (tax and non-tax revenues) in many countries of the Global...
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...
This Technical Note describes Ugandan trade data covering import and export declarations for ten calendar years from January 2013 to December 2022, constructed from transactional-level Ugandan administrative data. The trade data series contains...
This paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on formal sector employment in Uganda. Utilizing employee-level administrative tax data from the Uganda Revenue Authority, we describe the dynamics of employment as the pandemic evolved, seeking...
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This study examines how formal firms have been impacted by and recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, by drawing on two distinct but complementary data sources. This is the first attempt to use both survey and tax...
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