Taxation, expenditure, and accountability. Lessons from Namibia

Hansohm, Dirk; Klaus, Schade; Nepembe, Maano

doi:10.1111/j.1759-5436.2002.tb00033.x

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Unlike expenditures, local revenues and the costs of engagement have been given less attention. There are some studies on the role that revenues play in generating statecitizen engagement, but these focus on national, rather than on local level analysis (Guyer 1992, Hansohm et al 2002, and Moore 1998. Responding to this dearth of systematic analysis of the fiscal determinants of empowerment in local governance, the next three sections propose ways to link the conditions of the local public finances with the capacity of citizens and local governments to make effective choices.…”

Section: Fiscal Determinants Of Empowermentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This paper argues that the origin of the revenue source matters, but other studies argue against. Hansohm et al (2002), for example, argue that in Namibia there is a substantial level of accountability from the state to citizens, even though local governments derive a very small proportion of their income from own-source revenues. This alternative hypothesis suggests that what determines accountability is the "flexibility" or "discretion" with which local governments allocate resources rather than the "source" from where the revenue originates.…”

Section: Box 6 Problems With Local Revenues In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fiscal Determinants Of Empowerment

Raich¹

2005

Policy Research Working Papers

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Empowerment of local governments and citizens is a primary object of decentralization. Using the analytic lens of empowerment, this paper explores the nature of decentralized governance and how this type of structure is likely to be more or less empowering. The primary concern of this work is fiscal decentralization, specifically the association between fiscal determinants and the degree of empowerment of both citizens and local governments. The paper's main argument is that both the revenue and expenditure characteristics of local public finances have an effect on the degree of empowerment. The hypothesis is that in a context of decentralized local governance, empowerment is most likely to occur when three conditions prevail: low costs of participation; large and flexible budgets; and a high proportion of tax revenues from a local base. However, these ingredients for empowerment will not necessarily produce outcomes that are progressive and pro-poor. This paper contrasts the intrinsic and the instrumental approaches to empowerment, but it does not assess the impact of empowerment on instrumental outcomes. For this hypothesis to support an instrumentalist perspective on empowerment, further empirical work must be conducted.

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Section: Fiscal Determinants Of Empowermentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Box 6 Problems With Local Revenues In Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Fiscal Determinants Of Empowerment

Raich¹

2005

Policy Research Working Papers

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“…Estimates from 2002 suggest that about 11% of the population paid taxes on their income, 4 in contrast most citizens pay VAT (Hansohm et al . 2002). Taxation is centralised, with the exception of municipalities which can tax property and charge for certain service usages, and during data collection there was no autonomous revenue authority, rather the Ministry of Finance was in charge of collecting taxes (see also Söderström & Wangel Unpublished for a discussion of access to the Namibian tax system) 5 .…”

Section: Namibia As a Most Likely Case?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Taxation in Namibia: an everyday political practice without deliberation and influence

Söderström

2022

J. Mod. Afr. Stud.

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Tax compliance is a major concern as states try to increase state revenues in order to provide services for their populations. Remarkably, taxation has not figured centrally on the agenda among scholars working on the African voter. This article contributes through studying the social practice of taxes, by asking: how is taxation understood as a political practice? This is studied using focus groups across the private and public sector in Namibia, where the willingness to pay taxes and the relative tax burden is high. This micro-study of citizens’ experiences focuses on the perceived room for political practice in relation to taxes, sense of influence over taxes and whether taxes are thought about in citizenship terms. The article shows that taxes are relegated to a sphere of politics where deliberation and opportunities for accountability are missing, yet ideas of duty are central elements of tax compliance.

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“…Overall, tax revenues in Namibia are based on individual income tax, mining company tax, non-mining company tax, Value Added Tax (VAT), taxation on international trade through the South African Customs Union (SACU), and other tax revenues (levies) (Ministry of Finance, 2020, p. 18). Estimates from 2002 suggest that about 11% of the population paid taxes on their income, in contrast most citizens pay VAT (Hansohm et al, 2002). In part this is because many are not engaged in paid employment (World Bank, 2017, p. 16).…”

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confidence: 99%

Public Channels of Access and State-Citizen Encounters in the Namibian Tax System

Söderström

Wangel

2022

Administration & Society

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The ability to access the state as a taxpaying citizen is important for the purposes of building trust and reciprocity, voicing grievances and disseminating knowledge, and strengthening tax compliance and transparency. Based on original empirical data, this paper elaborates a theoretical argument of how state-citizen encounters in the case of taxation are conditioned by five interacting factors. Drawing on interviews with tax officials and taxpayers in Windhoek, Namibia, this paper shows that these five factors are weakly present and negatively reinforce each other, thereby providing insights into the Namibian tax system and everyday state-citizen tax encounters in developing countries.

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Taxation, expenditure, and accountability. Lessons from Namibia

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

Fiscal Determinants Of Empowerment

Fiscal Determinants Of Empowerment

Taxation in Namibia: an everyday political practice without deliberation and influence

Public Channels of Access and State-Citizen Encounters in the Namibian Tax System

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