Revenue Mobilisation Strategies in Digitised Tax Administrations: The Case of Uganda

适当的税收对低收入和中等收入国家填补资金缺口、为公共产品投资提供资金和加强国家建设至关重要。然而，许多小岛屿发展中国家，特别是在非洲，受到税收薄弱的影响，主要是由于普遍的非正规性和较差的税收遵从性。被研究的国家乌干达也不例外。在这方面，乌干达税务局(URA)在大规模登记和正规化方案上投入了大量资金。更具体地说，市建局正依赖来自其他政府机构的第三方数据来强制登记显示经济活动活跃的纳税人。虽然这种从传统的面对面登记和执法战略转向成本更低、数据驱动的方法对预算有限的税收当局很有吸引力，但人们对其有效性知之甚少。如果说有什么不同的话，那就是在乌干达占多数的强制注册比自愿注册纳税的可能性要小得多，这表明了合规方面的严重问题。在这种背景下，理解不同的注册策略如何转化为更高的税收，如何塑造纳税人的感知和数据取向，并最终改善合规行为，是至关重要的。此外，税务当局如何才能鼓励这些本质上不太合规的纳税人遵守税法，还需要更多证据。我的博士工作计划以乌干达为例，阐明在国家能力薄弱的情况下使用第三方数据的潜力，以使其正规化和强制执行。为此，我将收集和分析具有代表性的2000名纳税人的调查数据，这些纳税人按强制登记和自愿登记分开。调查数据将侧重于纳税人的登记经历，以及他们的纳税态度和看法，以捕捉登记过程与纳税人意见之间的相关性。首先结合调查和管理数据，我还打算将感知与现实生活中的合规行为联系起来。然后，我的目标是通过分析丰富的纳税人层面的市建局行政数据，用足够的计量工具来衡量强制登记对行为的因果影响。最后，我将严格测试强制注册背后的合规驱动因素，以随机对照试验的形式，在大约50,000个强制注册中建立一个廉价、易于扩展的大规模短信活动。通过这项试验，我将确定不同的催促信息--包括提供第三方信息--对纳税人合规行为的因果影响，从申报和支付数据来衡量。通过我的研究，我计划通过就第三方数据的实际潜力提供基于证据的建议，直接为市建局和其他税务部门的决策提供信息，以加强税务管理的核心职能和调动税收。

Adequate tax revenue is crucial for low- and middle-income countries to close their financing gap, fund investments in public goods, and strengthen State-building. Such needs are even more urgent after the COVID pandemic.However, many LMICs, especially in Africa, are affected by weak tax collection, mostly due to widespread informality and poor tax compliance. Uganda, the country under study, is no exception. In this context, the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has heavily invested in mass registration and formalisation programmes. More specifically, the URA is relying on information from third-party data from other government institutions to forcedly register taxpayers showing active economic activity. While such shift from traditional in-person registration and enforcement strategies to a cheaper, data-driven approach is appealing to budget-constrained revenue authorities, littleis known about their effectiveness. If anything, forced registrations, which became the majority in Uganda, are much less likely to pay taxes than voluntary registrations, indicating deep issue with compliance. Against this background, it is crucial to understand how different registration strategies translate into higher tax revenues, how they shape taxpayers' perceptions andattitudes, and eventually better compliance behaviour. In addition, more evidence is needed on how the revenue authority can encourage these intrinsically less compliant taxpayers to abide to the tax law. My doctoral work plans to use the case of Uganda to shed light on the potential of the use of third-party data in for formalisation and enforcement in a weak State capacity context. I will do so by collecting and analysing survey data from a representative sample of 2,000 taxpayers, split by forced and voluntary registrations. Survey data will focus on the registration experience of taxpayers, as well as on their tax attitudes and perceptions, so to capture correlations between the registration journey and taxpayers' opinions. Originally combining survey and administrative data, I also intend to connect perceptions withreal life compliance behaviour. Then, I aim to measure, with adequate econometric tools, the causal impact of forced registration on behaviours by analysing rich taxpayer-level URA administrative data. Lastly, I will rigorously test the drivers of compliance behind forced registrations, by setting up a cheap, easily scalable, mass SMS campaign on about 50,000 forced registrations in the form of a randomised control trial. Through the trial, I will identify the causal impact of different nudging messages - including the provision of third-party information - on taxpayers' compliance behaviour, measured from filing and payment data. With my research, I plan to directly inform the URA's and other revenue authorities' policymaking, by providing evidence-based recommendations on the actual potential of third-party datafor strengthening the core function of tax administrations and mobilising revenue.