VP attends ATAF 3rd International Conference on Tax in Africa on 26/09/2017

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The African Tax administrators Forum deserves our commendation for this timely conference and its important theme, Building Strong Domestic Tax Regimes in Africa: Strengthening VAT, Personal Income Tax and Companies Income Tax’’.

The forum had committed to this cause since August 2008. After the international conference in 2008 on a somewhat similar theme: Taxation, State building and Capacity development in Africa, senior tax administrators and policy makers from 39 African countries agreed to work towards the “establishment of the forum as a platform for sharing best practices in taxation matters in the region”.

It is remarkable indeed that the forum has through the years been unwavering on its founding mission and ideals. But it is worth noting also that the tax problems of African states have remained much the same in complexity and character since.

The elephant in the room in most discussions on tax in developing countries remains the problems of domestic resource mobilization, addressing the tax gap, or the difference between what we collect and what we could collect.

The constraints are similar though in varying degrees across the continent. They include, a large informal sector, including large subsistence agricultural sectors, tax evasion and avoidance, tax exemptions, and inequitable and opaque rent-sharing arrangements in the extractive sector.