Countries in the Global South have increased their tax revenue in recent decades, but overall revenues have often remained too low to sustain provision of crucially important public goods. Well-planned, efficient and equitable taxation helps to pursue economic growth, reduce inequalities, combat poverty, and provide social services.
This research project investigates how countries could develop their tax systems by improving compliance and mitigating the potential harmful effects of taxation on enterprise growth and job creation.
The project aims to develop the institutional and individual capacity of national tax administrators through technical co-operation, research co-creation, and by building national and international communities of practice around the use of administrative tax data in the Global South. The research outputs of the project are intended to assist policy makers as they develop and implement policy tools to improve development prospects in their countries.
This project will address the following topics:
Calls for research using this previously unavailable data will be announced from 2022 onwards.
All papers, events, briefs, blog posts, and opportunities to engage relating to the project will be available on this webpage.
This project covers the work in selected partner countries, the information of which will be updated on these pages. The work was initiated first in Uganda in 2018, in collaboration with the research division of the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA). The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland was contributing financially to this work in 2018-19.
Further collaborations have since been established in Zambia, Tanzania and Rwanda. Since 2020 the project has been a part of UNU-WIDER's programme on Domestic Resource Mobilization (DRM), with financial support from the Norwegian development agency Norad.
The ongoing collaboration in South Africa offers another example of the co-operation and research possibilities in other countries.
Improving capacities for tax and other domestic revenue collection is a key target of SDG 17. In addition, SDG 16 is dedicated to the promotion of inclusive societies with effective and accountable institutions. Furthermore, tax capacity is closely linked to the ability of governments to offer better public services to end poverty (SDG 1), reduce inequalities (SDG 10), and ensure sustainable economic growth (SDG 8). Good governance in the area of tax and social protection is a key factor in efforts to improve women and girls’ living standards as they are more dependent on efficient public service delivery (SDG 5).
Follow the conversation at #fairtaxation
This project is part of the 'Domestic Revenue Mobilization' programme.
Focal points: Amina Ebrahim, Jukka Pirttilä
Core researchers: Maria Jouste
Research support: Kwabena Adu-Ababio
Project support: Riikka Aartola
Communications: Anna Toppari
Financial support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad)
Technical assistance and increased use of ICT in tax administrations hold promise for greater revenue collection. Yet, the evidence on how these activities work in the real-world circumstances of developing countries is scant. The paper attempts to...
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...
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 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 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...
This paper simulates the impact of the global minimum corporate tax rate (GMCTR) in Uganda by estimating the difference between the mechanical and the behavioural changes in tax revenue. Overall, implementation of GMCTR will increase tax revenue, and...
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...
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...
Theme: 2019-23, Transforming states
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