Governments must make targeted investments in their tax capacity to increase tax revenues
Read "How Can Lower-Income Countries Collect More Taxes? The Role of Technology, Tax Agents, and Politics" by Oyebola Okunogbe and Gabriel Tourek here.
In both high- and low-income countries, taxes are the main source of government revenue. They fund roads, schools, and social programmes. But the average tax-to-GDP ratio in a developing country is less than half of the ratio in the global north. Increasing tax revenues is therefore a major policy goal in many low- and lower-middle-income countries. In this episode of VoxDevTalks, Oyebola Okunogbe discusses the role of technology, tax agents and politics in enabling lower-income countries to collect the taxes that will finance their growth.