What Can We Learn from the Uganda Revenue Authority’s Approach to Taxing High Net Worth Individuals?

Wealthy people contribute a significant share of the total revenue collected through personal income tax (PIT)in high-income countries. This is not the case in most low-income countries, where the bulk of revenue from PIT is collected from people who are in formal employment, especially in the public sector. In most cases, PIT is collected by employers and remitted to the tax authority. The problem is not an absence of laws providing for the taxation of wealthy individuals (commonly referred to as High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs)). Rather, these laws are rarely implemented. On the one hand,this results in losses of income tax revenue,and,on the other, in severe inequity in the distribution of the tax burden. Successfully levying PIT on HNWIs requires a special organisational effort on the part of the tax authority

Taxation des individus ayant un patrimoine net important: Leçons tirees de l’expérience des autorites fiscales de l’Ouganda

Low-income countries have, on average, reduced their reliance on foreign aid inthe past two decades. This has been achieved in part by collaborating with high-income countries and donor agencies to strengthen the capacity of tax authorities to collect revenue. While significant progress has been made, various revenue sources remain untapped. Many low-income countries continue to rely heavily on indirect taxes, such as Value Added Tax, and customs and excise duties. Income taxes contribute a very small percentage to total tax revenue, and are paid mainly by people in formal employment and large companies. It is estimated that on average, personal income taxes (PIT) contribute only 2 per cent of GDP in sub-Saharan Africa, which is low when compared to the 10 per cent collected in high-income countries.Les pays à faible revenu ont, en moyenne, réduit leur dépendance vis-à-vis des aides internationales au cours de ces deux dernières décennies. Ceci a été réalisé en partie grâce à la collaboration avec des pays à hauts revenus et des organismes donateurs dans le but de renforcer la capacité de collecte des autorités fiscales. Même si l’on note des progrès significatifs, diverses sources de revenu restent inexploitées. Beaucoup de pays à faible revenu continuent de dépendre lourdement des impôts indirects, tels que la Taxe sur la Valeur Ajoutée, et les droits de douane et d’accise. Les impôts sur le revenu ne représentent qu’un très petit pourcentage des recettes fiscales totales et sont payés principalement par les gens ayant un emploi formel et les grandes entreprises. On estime que les impôts sur le revenu des personnes privées (IRPP) participent en moyenne à seulement environ 2 pour cent du PIB dans l’Afrique Subsaharienne, ce qui est bas comparé aux 10 pour cent collectés dans les pays à hauts revenus

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead