Literature within an International Political Economy tradition of the social sciences has placed the role of the British Empire at the centre of the formation of a British-based tax haven system within a broader offshore world of global reach. However, this literature does not fully explain how this British system came about with much historical detail. This thesis contributes with an historical assessment of the British administrative tax haven experience as the phenomenon unfolded in a formative stage during the 1960s and 1970s.

Mick Moore (2023). Tax obsessions: Taxpayer registration and the “informal sector” in sub-Saharan Africa. Development Policy Review.

The article shows that tax administrations in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa maintain records on vast numbers of small enterprises that actually provide no revenue. The author argues that the drive to register more taxpayers provides an unjustifiably favorable impression of the extent of policy and managerial efforts to collect more revenue. This ‘obsession’ to register more taxpayers contributes to divert attention from failures to adequately tax more privileged Africans and larger enterprises.

Kyle McNabb and Hazel Granger (2023). The taxation of employment income in African countries: Findings from a new dataset. Journal of International Development, 1–24.

Much research to date on employment and personal taxation in LMICs has focused on questions of taxpayer registration, formalisation and compliance or studied the behavioural responses of taxpayers to specific reform episodes. Comparatively little work has attempted to understand what employment income tax policy design looks like across countries and the tax burdens faced by those in formal employment. The authors’ find that in some of the world’s poorest countries, income taxes bite at a punitively low level, below internationally defined poverty lines. This creates significant disincentives for workers to enter the formal workforce. The study also finds that personal income tax reform (PIT) in Africa is infrequent. On average, since 1995, African countries reformed their PIT systems just once every 5.5 years, compared with once every 1.5 years in the average OECD countries. Reforms have, however, led to significant reductions in the tax burdens faced by individuals.

Ablam E. Apeti and Eyah D. Edoh (2023). Tax revenue and mobile money in developing countries. Journal of Development Economics.

This paper analyzes the effect of mobile money adoption on tax revenue performance in a large sample of 104 developing countries over the period 1990–2019. The study concludes that mobile money increases tax revenue in mobile money countries relative to non-mobile money countries. The effect is larger on direct tax revenue compared to indirect tax revenue.

Thilo Albers, Morten Jerven and Marvin Suesse (2022). The effect is larger on direct tax revenue compared to indirect tax revenue. International Organization.

The authors construct a comprehensive new data set of tax and revenue collection for forty-six African polities from 1900 to 2015. The data show that polities in Africa have been characterized by strong growth in fiscal capacity on average, but that substantial heterogeneity exists. The empirical analysis reveals that established state-building factors such as democratic institutions and interstate warfare have limited power to explain these divergent growth paths. On the other hand, accounting for the relationship between African polities and the international environment , through the availability of external finance and the legacy of colonialism, is key to understanding their differing investments in fiscal capacity. These insights add important nuances to established theories of state building. Not only can the availability of external finance deter investment in fiscal capacity, but it also moderates the efficacy of established state-building factors.