Parallel session
Improving tax collection

The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing social and economic crisis has set the progress of fighting poverty back more than 10 years. It has increased inequalities and devastated economies. Financing the recovery will need increased domestic resource mobilization that protects the most vulnerable while at the same time stimulates economic growth and service delivery. Domestic resource mobilization of public revenue is going to be even more important in the recovery, both because of the need for increased financing, but also because other sources of financing to developing countries has decreased.
 
In this session, three distinguished scholars will review aspects of tax collection in the wake of the pandemic, with focus on tax examinations in Tanzania, how tax administrative interventions targeted at small businesses improve tax compliance and revenue collection and on building better algorithms to catch tax cheaters.

Collaborators

Simen BjørnerudSimen Bjørnerud | Chair

Simen Bjørnerud is a senior advisor in the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation. As part of the Tax for Development team, he manages a portfolio of activities that aims to enable development countries to improve financing for national development priorities and the SDGs through increased tax revenue and a strengthened social contract.

Ronald Waiswa | Presenter

Ronald Waiswa is a Research and Policy Analysis Supervisor at the Uganda Revenue Authority and has previously collaborated with the ICTD on ground-breaking research on taxing wealthy individuals and public sector agencies in Uganda. Michael Falade is the coordinator of the ICTD’s Nigerian Tax Research Network (NTRN), and has a decade of experience working in international development as an evaluator and researcher.

Amina Ebrahim | Presenter

Amina Ebrahim is a Research Associate at UNU-WIDER. She is pursuing her PhD in Economics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She works on the Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED) programme with a particular focus on the use of tax administrative data for research. Her recent research has focused on the evaluation of the South Africa’s youth wage subsidy policy. Her research interests include development economics, labour economics and taxation.

Ludvig Wier | Presenter

Ludvig Wier is a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley who holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen. His research and teaching focuses on international taxation, inequality, and development. In that context, he is also working as a consultant to the UNU-WIDER, IMF and the National Treasury in South Africa. He has previously worked as a public sector management consultant in the Boston Consulting Group and as an assistant economist at the Danish Ministry of Finance.