Paper short abstract:

Continuing reforms to property tax in Lagos, Nigeria have created a novel governance nexus. Lagos State links tax administration to titling processes; so Lagosians employ tax registration and payment strategically in a wider effort to define and defend property rights within a dynamic hybrid system.

Paper long abstract:

Continuing reforms to property taxation in Lagos, Nigeria, amidst a property boom have created a novel nexus in governance. While the state and taxpayers contest over value and value-extraction through collection policy, tax rates and practical norms of collection, a broader transformation is at work. For administrative utility, Lagos State has linked tax administration to titling processes; so now Lagosians have employed tax registration and payment as an additional strategy in a wider struggle to define and defend rights to their property. This is a useful tactic in a dynamic and hybrid situation which mixes precolonial, postcolonial and developmental regimes of rights. In contrast to studies after De Soto, this research shows that property rights in contemporary Lagos are not so much 'digital' - things that either exist or don't - but in this context at least, are 'analogue' - things people may have in varying degree, and which they are engaged in processes of strengthening and contesting, in ways which appropriate state policies such as taxation to other ends. In doing so, this paper also showcases that some of the most significant products of taxation can be unintended; the regimes of regulation and certification which are brought in to enable tax administration show their utility in other spheres, as we see ordinary Lagosians leverage them as ways of enhancing the depth and security of their own property claims.

Paper short abstract:

This paper employs qualitative methods to understand “everyday” taxation in rural north-eastern Sierra Leone. It considers the role of chiefs and non-state actors in taxation and the implications that these informal forms of taxation have for state institutions and state-society relations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper provides a view of "everyday" taxation as a means of understanding the complex relationships between society, non-state actors, local governments, and the state. After providing an overview of the dynamics of non-state taxation in northern and eastern Sierra Leone, the paper addresses two research questions: First, what explains sub-national variation in the nature of the relationship between non-state informal tax institutions and society? This focuses on explaining how and why non-state tax institutions collect taxes and engage with society in different ways, varying on a spectrum of coercion and consent. Second, what explains sub-national variation of the nature of the relationship between non-state informal tax institutions and formal state institutions? This focuses on explaining the differences in the nature of the interaction between formal and informal tax institutions, explaining why non-state institutions have a relationship with the state that is, in different contexts, complementary, competitive, substitutive, and co-existent. Examining the implications for the relationship between the state and society, the research relies on survey data and extensive qualitative and ethnographic methods, developing qualitative comparative explanatory models.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic insights on the import business of Somali business-men in Kenya, the paper argues that we need to understand ‘the time of the goods’ and its relation to tax, transit, and profit in order to unpack the moral dimension of the tax-exemption.

Paper long abstract:

Much ethnographic literature on economic practices deals with the relation between and transgressions of the formal and the informal divide. While this is also relevant when studying taxation and attitudes toward taxation, ethnographic evidence from Somali businessmen in Nairobi's Eastleigh neighborhood point to a temporal dimension. An central aspect of their import and trade with goods concerns keeping the goods moving; port authorities, border controls, and weighbridges not only represent the state, and the state's revenue authorities, more importantly they represent an interruption of time and of the flow of goods.

The paper shows that the effort put into securing quick or free passage through these state sanctioned transit and revenue post (often through bribes and coercion), concerns the control and management of time as much as concerns immorality and disobedience against the state. Analytically, the paper draws on Roitman's ideas of morality in relation to cross-border smuggling (2005). The temporal aspect is inspired by Guyer's encouragement to take the temporality in the gaps between formal and informal serious in order to understand the relation between time and power (2014). The paper examines how time is sanctioned, what kinds of profits are made, and what kind of delays matter? The paper argues that we need to understand 'the time of the goods' and its relation to tax, transit, and profit in order to unpack the moral dimension of the tax-exemption involved in the import and trade of Somali business-men.

Paper short abstract:

Based on a case study of mining in Zambia, I suggest that taxation increased mineworkers’ engagement in public politics and, furthermore, the struggle to impose taxes on multinational corporations sparked a broad, public debate on the state’s capacity to collect and redistribute national revenue.

Paper long abstract:

According to the resource curse debate, mineral rich states developed stronger bonds with corporations than with their citizens because they did not rely on domestic taxation (Karl 2007). Yet, in the Zambian case, mining taxation played a big role in the creation of a political sphere.

A wage tax was relatively easily imposed because companies collected the tax. Mineworkers considered their tax payment as part of a social contract and demanded welfare benefits in return. To articulate collective claims, workers joined trade unions and political parties.

Mineworkers' political criticism evolved into a broad debate when the country experienced its second mining boom and it came out that, between 2000 and 2008, mining corporations had contributed less than one percent to the total tax revenue. The government responded to the public pressure and started a tax reform, but mining towns demanded radical changes and voted an opposition party into office in 2011.

In this paper, I will describe how taxation induced a broad political mobilisation in Zambia because, first, wage-workers started going on strike, engaging in public debate and joining political parties and, second, because civil society organisations pressed the government to launch a series of tax reforms to collect more revenue from multinational corporations.

Paper short abstract:

Based on a comparative cases studies approach including 10 out of the 53 municipalities in Mozambique, in this paper we analyze the effect of social and political factors at the local level on the degree to which local governments exploit their local revenue potential.

Paper long abstract:

Although increased revenue mobilization is a central element of the SDG-Agenda and everyone is aware that the success of this agenda will be decided at the local level, much of the debate on taxation and development is still concentrated on the central government level.

However, we know that in many countries in Africa there is a considerable, yet unexploited, revenue potential at the subnational level. In addition, it is foreseeable that dynamics such as urbanization will further increase this potential.

Against this backdrop, in this paper we focus on the how social and political factors at the local level influence the degree to which local governments exploit their revenue potential.

In this vein, we analyze the effect of (i) the degree of social cohesion, (ii) political competition and (iii) the alignment between the party in government at the local and the national level on the use of existing tax potential and the performance of politically and administratively particularly demanding taxes.

Methodologically, we rely on a comparative case studies approach including 10 of the 53 municipalities in Mozambique. We collect interview material with tax administration officials, mayors, local council members and civil society organizations and benefit from access to a novel dataset on disaggregated municipal revenue collection data.

The analysis reveals how municipalities governed by the opposition are more committed and successful in collecting more demanding taxes and how they are also more active in engaging with citizen to develop something that can be labelled as a municipal fiscal contract.