In celebration of International Women's Day 2021, the ICTD hosted a webinar on women and taxation in Africa. This webinar featured distinguished tax researchers and practitioners who shared insights on issues including the role of women in shaping tax policy and administration at the national and international levels, the tax knowledge and compliance of African businesswomen, the impact of informal taxes on women across the continent. These slides showcase some of their perspectives and experiences, highlighting how biases against women in tax systems can be rectified, as well as how to facilitate greater women’s representation and participation in tax research, administration, and policy debates.

2. International Tax Policy
and Gender
Joy Waruguru Ndubai, LLM

3. What are the concerns?
Women and men face different socio-economic realities and that
means tax systems affect them in different ways.
Women and girls, already at a disadvantage due to:
• Unequal power relations
• Entrenched inequalities (cultural and sometimes political)
• Number of women in technical fields + visibility in the space
• Gender gaps in income levels
• Dominance in the informal sector/labour force participation
• Differences in consumption patterns
• Unpaid care-work
• Wealth holding
We need to understand how tax policies interact with these differing
socio-economic realities.
What do we mean by international tax policy?

4. International tax policy is unique since it exists by virtue of the bilateral
treaties between countries, some domestic policies and multilateral
cooperation (that makes it more complex to harmonize to address
gender inequality)
At the national and international levels, we have committed to address
gender inequality in every policy space – but the tax space has yet to
fully engage.
How do tax policies perpetuate gender inequality?
• Dominant economic rational over the last three decades has been
efficiency – particularly market efficiency.
• This has resulted in lowering rates with broadening bases (which only
worked for a while)
• But tax competition has seen other objectives of the tax system
receiving much less prioritization and being impacted more.
• Harmful tax competition only addressed limited aspects.
• IMF, 2014 – “Spill overs are affecting macroeconomic performance
and the broader level and distribution of welfare across countries”

5. What areas need to be addressed?
Governments everywhere now need to assess the socio-economic impact
of tax policies. We need to be aware of a number of factors:
We cannot pinpoint a singular tax on its own – evaluate the broader
fiscal system
Desirable means of revenue collection vs. expenditure priorities
Impact of spillover effects and resulting tax competition – how it
affects progressivity, and overall fairness.
System in harmony – are we meeting the revenue needs? Once
these are met is the fiscal system working to remedy some of the
effects or tax policy decisions?
Competitive systems led to increased broadening of bases and
lower rates leading to increased burdens on low mobility (persons
and capital)
How do we protect our fiscal systems? (and what threatens them?)

6. How can international tax policy be more responsive?
We now need a shifting of objectives – from efficiency to fairness
(rebalancing):
• For international tax and its unique problems – we need to place a
greater emphasis on fair taxation for all with some recognition that
non-residents earning income should share in this.
• Re-evaluate the role of tax competition (global and national)
• Revenue impact analyses for the policies introduced with the
objective of attracting FDI
The ability of the tax system to respond to ‘fiscal threats’ is as important
as addressing the explicit and implicit biases since our objective is
sustainable financing for gender responsive public services.
Responsive budget policies must be financed by progressive taxes or
regressive taxes (like VAT) should disproportionately finance gender
responsive public services.

7. Informal Taxes on Women
Dr Jalia Kangave
Lead Research Consultant, ICTD Gender and Tax Programme

8. Gender and informal taxes
Less than 5% of Africa’s adult population pays personal
income taxes
While women and men in the labour force pay very little in
personal income taxes, they pay a range of formal and
informal taxes and user fees at the local government level
Similarly, female-headed households spend significant
proportions of their income on informal taxes and user fees
to access goods that would otherwise be financed by taxes

9. Gender and tax in markets
In Tanzania, women paid up to 20 percent of their daily income in toilet
fees. This was almost twice as much as men paid (Siebert and Mbise,
2018)
Market fees in Zimbabwe and Uganda were found to be regressive,
placing a higher burden on women because they traded in smaller
items (Ligomeka, 2019; SEATINI & Oxfam, 2017)
In Nigeria, male tax collectors were responsible for the highest cases of
physical and verbal harassment, confiscation of goods and demands for
sexual favours. However, female tax collectors were also well
represented in cases of bribe collection (Akpan & Sempere, 2019)
In some cases, vulnerable women (e.g., pregnant, elderly and widows)
receive preferential treatment e.g., being exempted from paying taxes
(Prichard & van den Boogaard, 2017)

10. Tax payments in households
 In Sierra Leone, female-headed household paid more informal taxes for
community goods and to access public goods and services than male-
headed households (van den Boogaard, 2018)
 Similarly, female-headed households in the DRC paid significantly more
than male-headed households to access public services like water,
healthcare and sanitation (Paler et al., 2017)

11. Research going forward
 More evidence on the impact of small and informal taxes and fees
including the factors that drive the gendered differences in informal tax
incidence
 What are the gendered differences in tax awareness and what steps
can be taken to ensure that women in the informal sector have access
to tax education?
 Through what channels do women and men in the informal sector
engage with the tax system? What role do associations, for example,
play in tax bargains?

12. Questions and Discussion