Over the past two decades, lower-income countries, donors, and international organisations have devoted considerable effort to strengthening lower-income countries’ capacity to tax cross-border economic activity. Much effort has centred on adopting and implementing international tax standards developed in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) bodies. Yet critics have long argued that these standards are poorly suited to lower-income contexts. This paper asks how they actually work in practice.
It synthesises seven country case studies – Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Uganda, and Zambia – commissioned by the ICTD as part of the project ‘Comparative Perspectives on International Tax from the Global South’. Each was published as a working paper. These countries were chosen because all had meaningful experience with international standards, but differed in which standards they engaged with, and how far. In each country local researchers combined documentary analysis with semi-structured interviews across four areas where international standards have evolved rapidly: exchange of information (EOI), transfer pricing, tax treaties, and taxation of digital services.
The evidence confirms that the complexity of international standards makes successful implementation demanding, and requires technical capacity currently beyond the reach of some lower-income countries. Even so, some have applied these standards in ways that contribute significantly to revenue mobilisation. However, these gains are uneven, often slow to materialise, and difficult to attribute. Moreover, the precise numbers are frequently missing as relevant data is not collected systematically. Building on this, the paper draws four main conclusions.
“International tax standards should not be treated as ready-made solutions to be adopted in isolation. Their effects depend on sequencing, domestic capacity, and interaction between different parts of the tax system.”
