Beyond Greed: Why Armed Groups Tax

Bandula-Irwin, Tanya; Gallien, Max; Jackson, Ashley; Boogaard, Vanessa van den; Weigand, Florian

doi:10.19088/ictd.2021.021

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 46 publications

(68 reference statements)

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“…notes, '[t]he specific gestures, styles, and formal expressions that characterise one's relationship to a moral code are not contingent but a necessary means to understand the kind of relationship that is 36 Of course, this does not reflect reality everywhere. In other cases, for example, as in Somalia and pre-2021 Afghanistan, non-state groups coercively enforce zakat payments (Bandula-Irwin,Gallien, Jackson, van den Boogaard and Weigand 2021;Hiraal Institute 2018;Jackson 2018). …”

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confidence: 99%

Between God, the People, and the State: Citizen Conceptions of Zakat

Gallien¹,

Javed²,

Boogaard³

2023

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The global pool for zakat – one of the five pillars of Islam mandating an annual payment typically equivalent to 2.5 per cent of an individual’s productive wealth – is estimated to make up between USD 200 billion and 1 trillion. States have long sought to harness zakat for their own budgets – and legitimacy. To date, however, there has been no systematic empirical discussion of how citizens perceive and engage with state involvement in zakat and how they perceive state-run zakat funds. These perceptions and experiences are central to important questions of how we conceptualise fiscal transfers and the relationship between citizens and states: if it is legally treated as one, does zakat function like a tax? Do citizens engage with it differently? Does its formalisation strengthen or undermine the social norms in which it is embedded? This paper provides, to the best of our knowledge, the first comparative analysis of how citizens in Muslim-majority countries conceptualise zakat, attempting to situate it between religion, charity, and the state. We do so in the context of three lower middle-income countries (LMICs) – Morocco, Pakistan, and Egypt – representing variation in state involvement in zakat, relying on nationally representative surveys covering 5,484 respondents, of whom 2,648 reported that they had paid zakat in the preceding 12 months. Despite heterogeneity in state practice across the three countries, and in contrast to our expectations, we find commonalities in how citizens perceive zakat. Across our cases, citizens understand zakat as existing beyond the state, even where the state is involved in zakat administration and enforcement. Rather than viewing it as a legal obligation akin to taxation or merely as a charitable payment, Muslims across diverse religious and institutional contexts predominately conceive of zakat as a form of informal tax, rooted in social pressures and sanctions in the afterlife, but existing beyond the limits of state authority. This has important conceptual implications for the study of public finance, which has been predominately state-centric, while suggesting that there are clear limits to states’ ability to harness zakat payments into public finance systems. It also suggests clear limits to the ability of states to ‘harness’ zakat as a fiscal tool through centralised administration or mandated enforcement.

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confidence: 99%

Between God, the People, and the State: Citizen Conceptions of Zakat

Gallien¹,

Javed²,

Boogaard³

2023

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“…For a review of how other insurgencies have used taxes in similar ways, see Bandula-Irwin et al (2021).…”

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Taliban Taxation in Afghanistan: (2006-2021)

Amiri¹,

Jackson²

2022

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Before taking control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban had developed a remarkably state-like revenue collection system throughout the country. This ICTD research explores how that came to be, and what factors shaped the various forms of Taliban taxation. Drawing primarily on fieldwork from Helmand, Ghazni and Kunduz provinces, this paper explores in depth three commonplace types of Taliban taxation: ushr (effectively a harvest tax, applied to both legal crops as well as opium), taxation on transport of goods (similar to customs), and taxes on aid interventions. The paper pays particular attention to geographic variation, exploring how and why each practice evolved differently at the subnational level.

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A tax by any other name? Conceptions of taxation and implications for research

Bak

Boogaard

2023

J. Mod. Afr. Stud.

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As taxation has become a prominent issue on the international development policy agenda, a growing body of research has focused on taxpayer perceptions and experiences of taxation. A strand of this research emphasises the importance of the historical, political and social context of taxation. We position ourselves in line with this research as we pay attention to the emic definitions of taxation in Africa across contexts, languages, and time periods. We explore how the conception of taxation in different contexts is closely interrelated with the language used to describe it, with language being a product of histories of colonialism, conflict, and extraction by social, traditional and political actors. We argue that studies of taxation, particularly survey-based research, need to be complemented, if not informed, by a deeper understanding of the diversity of tax landscapes and of the meanings ascribed to taxation in a given context. This will strengthen content and interpretive validity of taxpayer perception data as well as provide important nuances to the understanding of the dynamics of taxpayers’ experiences of contemporary states and systems of taxation.

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Beyond Greed: Why Armed Groups Tax

Cited by 4 publications

References 46 publications

Between God, the People, and the State: Citizen Conceptions of Zakat

Between God, the People, and the State: Citizen Conceptions of Zakat

Taliban Taxation in Afghanistan: (2006-2021)

A tax by any other name? Conceptions of taxation and implications for research

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