Tax Administration and Compliance

Most people pay taxes in some form, and they are crucial for funding public services like education and healthcare. The structure and quality of tax administration determines who pays and how much is collected. Tax administrators in low-income countries have a difficult job, which also includes effectively fighting tax evasion. How can tax officer ensure that all taxpayers are treated fairly and equitably? And how can they promote trust that revenue is used in beneficial ways for taxpayers and their communities?

Test your Knowledge

Which of the following functions is not a function of tax administrations?

Monitor and enforce tax compliance

Write and revise laws to set tax rates

Facilitate compliance

Improve administrative capacity

Which of the following is not a major tax type in developing countries?

VAT

CIT

PIT

PAYE

What is the minimum tax-to-GDP ratio for government functioning?

15-20%

55-60%

5-10%

25-30%

Which of the following was not among the objectives of post-independence governments in low-income countries in the early independence period (late 1950s-1970s)?

Import tariff to protect domestic industrial sectors

Progressive direct (income) taxes to support redistribution

Reduction in progressivity of direct taxes as they depress entrepreneurship

Export taxes levied on agricultural products and other raw commodities

Which of the following measures was a central component of the Washington Consensus in the 1980s?

Tax progressivity

Trade liberalisation

Customer-oriented approach of tax administration

Estimation and effective reduction of “tax gaps”

Which of the following statement is not correct?

Taxpayers’ education and sensitisation initiatives are aimed at increasing understanding of the tax system and spur quasi-voluntary compliance.

Registration campaigns are likely to generate very little revenue from newly registered taxpayers.

The automation of tax collection reduce face-to-face interaction, diminishing both scope for corruption and compliance cost.

Taxing the better off is not a channel of potentially high revenue.

What are the taxes in which discrepancies can be identified thanks to electronic fiscal devices (EFDs)?

Property and VAT

Import and CIT

CIT and VAT

PAYE and PIT

What can't technology do for tax administrations?

Reduce the cost of compliance

Guarantee data sharing and cooperation across departments and institutions

Increase the accuracy of tax returns

Reduce room for corruption and theft

Knowledge Hub

External Resources

The Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool

The TADAT website, jointly run by the IMF and World Bank, offers various details on what IFIs consider to be the key performance indicators on which to assess the quality of tax administration, as well as different country reports.

The African Tax Administration Forum

The ATAF website provides access to a variety of resources compiled by the umbrella-body of African revenue authorities, from research papers to revenue data.

The Government Revenue Dataset

The ICTD-UNU WIDER Government Revenue Dataset is the best source of both tax and non-tax revenue for cross-country comparative analysis. The website includes a guide on how to use the dataset and links to research papers based on the data.

World Bank Global Tax Programme

The go-to website to explore the World Bank approach to supporting domestic revenue mobilisation around the globe, it also contains specific pages directly linking to all of their work on health taxes, gender and tax and environmental taxation.

Addis Tax Initiative

The official website of the ATI, a multi-stakeholder partnership which aims to support fair domestic revenue mobilisation to achieve the SDGs across low-income countries, which includes many reports on tax expenditure and tax incentives amongst others.

TAXDEV

A joint initiative from the Institute of Fiscal Studies and the Overseas Development Institute, the TAXDEV website links many different papers on tax policy making in low- and middle-income countries, with a particular focus on Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda.

Global Tax Expenditure Database

A joint initiative by IDOS and CEP, the website provides access to the most comprehensive country-level dataset on tax expenditures, as well as to the methodology used in its production and to papers making use of it.