Estimating tax gaps in Zambia - A bottom-up approach based on audit assessments

Assessing tax gaps—the difference between the potential and actual taxes raised—plays a vital role in achieving positive domestic revenue objectives through improved and reformed taxation. This is particularly pertinent for growth outcomes in developing countries. This study uses a bottom-up approach based on micro-level audit information to estimate the extent of tax misreporting in Zambia. Our methods predict the extent of tax evasion using a regression and a machine learning algorithm based on a sample of audited firms, after which we estimate tax gaps using a standard approach. We estimate total tax gaps as 56 per cent and 47 per cent for the two approaches, respectively. These gaps are mainly driven by corporate taxes. Applying our gap to key industries shows that the extractives sector in Zambia records the highest gaps in terms of corporate income tax (CIT) and one of the lowest gaps in terms of value-added tax (VAT)nonPeerReviewe

Assessing the impact of an intervention to withhold value-added tax in Zambia

Improving tax collection is essential if developing economies are to avoid over-reliance on external donor funds and loans. Revenue authorities in the Global South have recently adopted new policy tools to improve domestic revenue mobilization through taxes. One such new policy is a withholding system for value-added tax (VAT). In this study, we investigate the impact of adopting a system for withholding value-added tax on VAT collection in Zambia. While similar systems are in place in many countries, empirical research into their impact is still limited and inconclusive. Using a difference-in differences approach, we estimate the impact of introducing such a system in Zambia on the value added, sales, purchases, and output VAT of affected firms. We observe significant positive impacts after the reform on those indicators that the withholding agent reports and on remits to the tax authority. We find that the reform improves compliance with the introduction of a change in the tax remitting liability in the transaction chain.nonPeerReviewe

Impact of voice reminders to reinforce harvest aggregation services training for farmers in Mali

Dofiles, ready-for-analysis data used in the analysis published in the Final Report to 3ie on the project, "Impact of voice reminders to reinforce harvest aggregation services training for farmers in Mali" (project code TW4.1016). This project was funded as part of the Agricultural Innovation Thematic Window round

Recent status and knowledge on the Re-emergence of Monkeypox Disease

Insights into the Monkeypox (MPX) disease, causative virus, its transmission including possible reservoir(s) is scattered. The recent outbreak of MPX disease as we begin to see a high number of cases emerging from non-endemic countries is a wake-up call for the research community. This review presents an update on the re-emergence of the MPX disease as it spreads across the globe like never before. Unlike most single-stranded RNA viruses, such as SARS-COV 2, this zoonotic disease (MPX) is caused by a double-stranded DNA virus, the Monkeypox virus. Thus, the replication machinery of the MPX virus genome is highly conserved without undergoing many changes (mutations), which usually present challenges in vaccine development. To review recent studies and reports on MPX disease, a comprehensive scientific literature search in relation to terms such as MPX disease, MPX virus, and transmission routes of MPX virus was conducted. Suspected MPX virus reservoirs, animal-to-human and three main person-to-person modes of transmission were noted to have been reported. Finally, diagnostic methods of MPX virus and treatment or prevention measures of the disease as indicated by the WHO and CDC were also reviewed

The mitigating role of tax and benefit rescue packages for poverty and inequality in Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper analyses the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related tax-benefit measures in 2020 in a cross-country comparative perspective for five African countries: Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. We first estimate the impact of the crisis on disposable incomes, how effects vary across the income distribution, and in how far tax-benefit policies stabilized earnings losses. We then evaluate the impact on income-based poverty and inequality and the contribution of discretionary tax-benefit policies in alleviating the shock. Our analysis shows modest increases in headcount poverty rates and inequality, and somewhat larger effects on the poverty gap due to lower relative earnings losses of the poor population at the early stage of the pandemic analysed here. We find very limited stabilizing power of tax-benefit policies overall and automatic stabilizers in particular. This illustrates gaps in coverage for the large informal sector and a general lack of income-related means-tested benefits. Except for the Emergency Social Cash Transfer in Zambia, discretionary tax-benefit policies adopted in response to COVID-19 have had limited impact. Pausing a large school feeding programme in Ghana during lockdown has in turn put additional pressure on households with school-age children