Gender and Tax Incidence of Rural Land use Fee and Agricultural Income Tax in Ethiopia

Komatsu, Hitomi; Ambel, Alemayehu A.; Koolwal, Gayatri B.; Yonis, Manex Bule

doi:10.1596/1813-9450-9715

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Women are thus less liable to pay property taxes, and pay less proportionately because of the lower value of the properties they own (World Bank 2023). However, there is some evidence that, where they do pay, women bear a larger tax burden on land taxes because of gender agricultural productivity gaps, shaped by norms limiting women's role in agriculture (Komatsu et al 2021).…”

Section: Direct Taxes On Income Wealth and Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, in 2017 the South African Revenue Authority (SARS) adopted a gender mainstreaming framework to address issues of gender equality and diversity, with further action taken internally to address gender-based violence (SARS 2019). Similarly, in a bid to increase women's access to tax services in Pakistan, the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa hired 12 female field officers to maintain land records, and female inspectors and property tax collectors (Komatsu and Touqeer 2023).…”

Section: Women In Tax Administrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Pakistan, while researchers found that women's limited mobility was likely to restrict their access to property registration and tax services, digitalisation of tax services did not guarantee increased access -particularly for women with limited education, who were less likely to own mobile phones and use the digital banking services (Komatsu and Touqeer 2023).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Engendering Taxation: a Research and Policy Agenda

Joshi,

Kangave,

van den Boogaard

2024

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Increased attention has been paid to the gender dimensions of taxation in recent years, though there has been limited research on the subject – particularly in lower-income contexts. Understanding how tax policies might affect women in lower-income countries is important at the current time, when governments are looking for new ways to increase domestic revenue – particularly through expanding the tax base. Given that women have historically represented only a small part of the formal workforce in these contexts, a shift towards indirect taxes and taxing the informal economy are likely to have a disproportionate effect on poorer households, and women in particular. Understanding whether, and in what specific ways, tax policy in lower-income countries affects the ability of women to participate in the workforce and carry out their caring responsibilities within households is critical for ensuring development with gender justice. This paper reviews the existing literature and related debates on gender and tax in lower income countries. It identifies knowledge gaps, and maps broader issues that are relevant for understanding the gendered impact of taxation. The paper makes four broad observations. First, existing research focuses on formal direct taxes that are less relevant for women in lower-income contexts, given their high participation rates in the informal economy. Instead, presumptive taxes, user fees and informal taxes place a disproportionate burden on low income women. Second, there needs to be greater attention paid to the ways in which women in senior and junior positions in tax administration can affect how taxpayers interact with tax authorities. Third, any assessment of tax policy’s impact on gender needs to consider revenue and expenditure together to ensure that the positive effects of tax policies are not undermined by budgets, or vice versa. Finally, we show that there has been insufficient gender-disaggregated data collection and analysis, which is required to draw generalizable conclusions about the gendered impact of tax policy. We argue that tax specialists need to think about research questions that address these gaps, and simultaneously address methodological challenges by gender disaggregation in data collection, as well as impact evaluation of tax policy implementation and innovation. Our overall conclusions are that tax policies can be made gender-neutral by paying careful attention to where they affect women differentially. There are opportunities for governments to explore policies that positively discriminate as a way to address structural gendered inequities. At the same time we recognise that, barring a few exceptions, tax policy and administration is often an unwieldy instrument to address gender equity directly. Instead other policies relating to labour markets, social protection and public services are better placed to be gender-transformative.

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Section: Direct Taxes On Income Wealth and Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Women In Tax Administrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Engendering Taxation: a Research and Policy Agenda

Joshi,

Kangave,

van den Boogaard

2024

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“…A study from two states in Nigeria highlights implicit biases related to presumptive taxation in the informal sector (Akpan and Sempere 2019). Another recent study on the gender-differentiated impact of rural land use fees and agricultural income taxes in Ethiopia finds that the disparate tax burden on women is due more to social norms that limit their role in agriculture and to a gendered agricultural productivity gap (Komatsu et al 2021). From the benefit side of the fiscal system, an incidence analysis of agricultural extension and food security programs in Ethiopia finds, among other things, that men benefited more from extension services than women (Mogues 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Gendered Fiscal Incidence Analysis for Ethiopia: Evidence from Individual-Level Data

Ambel¹,

Tesfaye²,

Yonis³

2022

Policy Research Working Papers

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The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

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