Pre-colonial centralization and tax compliance norms in contemporary Uganda
The paper examines the legacy of pre-colonial centralization on tax compliance norms of citizens in contemporary Uganda. By combining geo-referenced anthropological data on pre-colonial ethnic homelands with survey data from several rounds of the Afrobarometer Survey, respondents from the historically centralized homelands are found to exhibit a higher willingness to pay tax compared to respondents […]
Policy implementation under stress: Central-local government relations in property tax collection in Tanzania
Inter-organisational cooperation in revenue collection has received limited attention in the tax administration literature. Recent experiences from Tanzania offer a unique opportunity to examine opportunities and challenges facing such cooperation between central and local government agencies in a developing country context. The administration of property taxes (PT) in Tanzania has been oscillating between decentralised and […]
Lobbying and the shaping of tax policies in Tanzania
This paper explores the role of interest groups in shaping tax policies in Tanzania. Tracing the various stages behind the VAT Act 2014 in Tanzania, weighing the various interests, lobbyists and political actors, the study documents a tax reform outcome that diverted significantly from the draft stage to the final gazette stage. The analysis of […]
Most people are not economists: Citizen preferences for corporate taxation
On what bases should corporations be taxed? This article presents evidence from a series of discrete choice experiments designed to elicit the tax preferences of ordinary citizens. We find that respondents favour higher taxes on more profitable companies, but not high enough to make taxes progressive. Moreover, respondents prefer higher taxes on more internationally mobile […]
