New digital technologies are now being widely used in Africa and lower-income countries (LICs). This has had an impact on tax administration, which has been increasingly digitised. Specifically Digital Financial Services (DFS) and digital IDs can impro …

Digital financial services (DFS) have rapidly expanded across Africa and other low-income countries. At the same time, low-income countries face strong pressures to increase domestic resource mobilisation, and major challenges in taxing the digital eco …

There is increasingly strong evidence that taxation can contribute to expanded government responsiveness and accountability. However, such positive connections are not guaranteed. Rather, they are shaped by the political and economic context and specif …

Taxation is high on the international development agenda, largely due to growing evidence that it can not only provide sustainable development funding, but also contribute to expanded responsiveness and accountability in government. This is because: (i …

Economists generally consider property taxes to be good taxes, and many countries are encouraged to increase and improve revenue collection from property taxes. Beyond the economic efficiency of property taxation, research suggests that the political s …

Governance practices in peripheral regions of low-income countries often diverge dramatically from statutory rules, with actual governance often representing a hybrid of formal rules and informal practices that are often highly normalized and widely ac …

This brief thus begins to explore a critical question for governments and civil society: To what extent are current efforts to expand access to information on beneficial ownership likely, in practice, to enhance the ability of low-income countries to i …

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 …

Citizens often pay a range of ‘taxes’ that differ substantially from statutory policies, in low-income and post-conflict countries and particularly in rural areas. These ‘informal taxes’, paid to a variety of state and non-state actors, are frequently …

The progress of decentralization efforts in Africa has brought with it expanded discussion of local government taxation, and the potential for tax reform to spur broader state building and governance gains. This paper correspondingly provides a ground …

In recent years rapidly growing donor interest was witnessed in tax issues in the developing world. This reflects a concern with revenue collection to finance public spending, but also recognition of the centrality of taxation to growth, redistribution …