Encouraging digital tax tools as a response to COVID: Evidence from Eswatini

Abstract

Many tax authorities changed the mode of interacting with taxpayers from physical to online as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We study the effect of the e-tax-filing in Eswatini, using a difference-in-difference and propensity score methods that exploit the limited take-up of e-tax filing. We present three sets of results. First, larger and more IT-sophisticated firms are more likely to adopt e-Tax. Second, after adoption, e-Tax has mixed results on filing behavior and reporting accuracy. Third, companies remit less tax after adoption e-tax-filing.