Norms, Power and the Socially Embedded Realities of Market Taxation in Northern Ghana

Co-Financing Community-Driven Development Through Informal Taxation: Experimental Evidence from South-Central Somalia

“…29 As described above, registration does not necessarily lead to tax payment. Meanwhile, literature on tax and accountability makes clear that taxation only leads to improved accountability under certain conditions, including where taxpayers have the motivation, resources, and powerthe capacity for collective actionto make successful demands on governments for reciprocity (Prichard 2015).…”

“…The link between tax and accountability is based on a contractual view of taxation, which has a simple logic: where individuals pay taxes, they are more likely to make demands of governments and where governments rely on tax revenues, they are more likely to be responsive to citizens (see e.g. Bräutigam 2002;Moore 2008;Prichard 2015).…”

Innovations in Tax Compliance: Conceptual Framework

“…Recent surveys in Sierra Leone and the DRC both find that taxpayers report surprisingly limited understanding of the taxes that are due. 99 Discussions with small traders in Ghana, and elsewhere, similarly reveal significant difficulty in accessing information about the tax system, 100 while small firms often face substantial complexity and administrative hurdles to enter the formal sector. 101 Reflecting this concern, there has been mounting interest across countries in expanding taxpayer education.…”

“…103 Particularly where face-to-face interactions between taxpayers and tax officials are common there is extensive evidence of tax collectors seeking to extract informal payments from taxpayers. There is some evidence that this extraction sometimes targets more vulnerable or less educated groups, 104 or areas in which tax collectors have greater leverage -owing, for example, to the ability to disrupt business operations 105 or access to key services. 106 But extraction is not limited to these groups.…”

Taxing Informality: Compliance and Policy Preferences in Urban Zambia

“…Sub-nationally, decentralisation in Africa has been a major impetus for improving revenue mobilisation to finance the goods and services provided by local governments (Juul, 2006). Since market traders and street vendors often fall under local government jurisdiction, the licence and rental fees they pay constitute a major source of local internally-generated revenue (Prichard, 2019;Prichard & van den Boogaard, 2015). In addition, there are a variety of non-statutory taxes levied on the informal economy, including by chiefs, warlords, youth vigilantes, self-help groups, and cooperatives (Juul, 2006;Meagher, 2018;Prud'homme, 1992;van den Boogaard, Prichard, & Jibao, 2019).…”