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 deve …

Taxing the informal economy neither guarantees substantial new revenue nor a fairer tax system. Instead, it risks increasing the burden on some of the most vulnerable groups. In the middle of an economic crisis, this would serve to reinforce deeply emb …

National tax administrations in sub-Saharan Africa have undergone considerable reform in recent decades. In several respects, they are, on average, more reformed and more efficient than tax administrations in other low-income regions. Many have made ma …

National tax administrations in sub-Saharan Africa have undergone considerable reform in recent decades. In a number of respects, they are, on average, more reformed and more efficient than tax administrations in other low income regions of the world. …

It is widely believed that the governments of many low-income countries, and especially the relatively poor performers, should be aiming to increase the proportion of GDP they raise in tax revenue. There are risks in emphasising increasing revenue at t …

Generally it is now an accepted belief that taxation contributes to the quality of governance. There are a number of variants of the broad argument. The most general proposition is that, if governments are dependent on broad general taxation for their …

In this paper, the tax reforms discussed are a response to fiscal needs, but not generally to fiscal crises. In Section 2, the author explains the situation in which these reforms were introduced. It is explored in more detail in Section 3 (VAT), Secti …