Working Paper
An assessment of presumptive tax in Uganda
Presumptive tax, a final tax on business income, was introduced in Uganda in 1997. The latest reform to the regime in July 2020 sought to make the system more progressive, simpler, and fairer to small firms. In this work, we evaluate the reform...
Working Paper
Do tax administrative interventions targeted at small businesses improve tax compliance and revenue collection?
This paper conducts an impact evaluation of the effects of two tax administration interventions—a taxpayer register expansion and education programme, and a new electronic filing system for presumptive tax—on the number of small business taxpayers...
Working Paper
The effects of a risk-based approach to tax examinations
While technical assistance and increased use of ICT in the area of tax administration have been regarded to hold considerable promise for greater revenue collection, the evidence on how these activities work in the real-world circumstances of...
Working Paper
Compliance rates with local and national business taxes
This paper investigates business tax compliance in a multilevel tax structure with limited coordination. We study the case of Kampala, where firms are taxed at national and local levels—by the Uganda Revenue Authority and the Kampala Capital City...
Working Paper
The corporate income tax gap in South Africa
A key objective of many governments is to improve tax revenue mobilization. One way to achieve this is by improving tax compliance. This requires accurate knowledge of the tax gap, i.e. the difference between what should be paid and what is actually...
Research Brief
Estimating tax gaps in the non-financial sector
Many governments, particularly those in developing countries, have set an objective to improve tax revenue mobilization to offer more and better public services to their citizens. To develop effective revenue-raising strategies it is necessary to...
Working Paper
Pre-colonial centralization and tax compliance norms in contemporary Uganda
The paper examines the legacy of pre-colonial centralization on tax compliance norms of citizens in contemporary Uganda. By combining geo-referenced anthropological data on pre-colonial ethnic homelands with survey data from several rounds of the...
Blog
Ending aid dependency: Taxation in developing countries can be improved through collaboration
Finland aims to raise the amount of its development assistance to 0.7% of GDP, and this goal has good grounds. But how can we make sure that the...
Working Paper
A fiscal approach to the social contract in sub-Saharan African countries
The COVID-19 pandemic showed that many developing countries could not respond effectively to crises due to their limited capacity to diversify their social protection responses. Social protection systems depend mainly on government tax revenue...
Blog
Bootcamp for better tax policies in Africa
‘I intend to see a world in which tax policy research is based on evidence, and policy decisions are data-driven.’ This is an aspiration expressed by...