IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevst/v54y2018i1p1-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Taxing Times: Taxation, Divided Societies and the Informal Economy in Northern Nigeria

Author

Listed:
  • Kate Meagher

Abstract

This paper challenges the notion that taxing the informal economy provides a mechanism for increasing popular political voice and rebuilding the social contract. It contends that current arguments for taxing the informal economy suffer from a Eurocentric understanding of taxation and state formation, and a fiscally essentialist and undifferentiated notion of the informal economy. Drawing on fieldwork in northern Nigeria, this paper shows that history, gender, wealth and ethno-religious identity influence how taxing the informal economy shapes governance outcomes. Evidence from Nigeria suggests an inverse relationship between informal economy taxation and political voice, posing the risk that increased taxation will exacerbate social divisions rather than rebuild the social contract.

Suggested Citation

  • Kate Meagher, 2018. "Taxing Times: Taxation, Divided Societies and the Informal Economy in Northern Nigeria," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(1), pages 1-17, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:54:y:2018:i:1:p:1-17
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2016.1262026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2016.1262026
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00220388.2016.1262026?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Favourate Y. Mpofu & Tankiso Moloi, 2022. "Direct Digital Services Taxes in Africa and the Canons of Taxation," Laws, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-20, July.
    2. Mpofu Favourate Y Sebele, 2021. "Informal Sector Taxation and Enforcement in African Countries: How plausible and achievable are the motives behind? A Critical Literature Review," Open Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 72-97, January.
    3. Ma Josep Cascant‐Sempere, 2022. "Grounding ActionAid's Tax Justice Campaigns in Nigeria," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 53(3), pages 525-550, May.
    4. Meagher, Kate, 2020. "Illusions of inclusion: assessment of the World Development Report 2019 on the changing nature of work," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103000, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Weigel, Jonathan, 2020. "The participation dividend of taxation: how citizens in Congo engage more with the state when it tries to tax them," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 104561, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Max Gallien & Vanessa van den Boogaard, 2023. "Formalization and its Discontents: Conceptual Fallacies and Ways Forward," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 54(3), pages 490-513, May.
    7. Favourate Y Sebele-Mpofu & Nomazulu Moyo, 2021. "An Evil to be Extinguished or a Resource to be harnessed-Informal Sector in Developing Countries: A Case of Zimbabwe," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 13(3), pages 53-72.
    8. Vanessa van den Boogaard & Rachel Beach, 2023. "Tax and governance in rural areas: The implications of inefficient tax collection," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(7), pages 1892-1912, October.
    9. Anuradha Joshi, 2023. "What makes “difficult” settings difficult? Contextual challenges for accountability," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 41(S1), March.
    10. Favourate y Mpofu, 2022. "Sustainable mobilisation of tax revenues to enhance economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges, opportunities, and possible areas of reform," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 11(9), pages 222-233, December.
    11. Pallavi Roy & Mushtaq H. Khan, 2021. "Digitizing Taxation and Premature Formalization in Developing Countries," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(4), pages 855-877, July.
    12. Aminu Yaru, Mohammed & Aminu Yaru, Mohammed & Awodun, Muritala, 2019. "Tax Administration In The Informal Sector: Kwara State Internal Revenue Service Perspective," Ilorin Journal of Economic Policy, Department of Economics, University of Ilorin, vol. 6(6), pages 1-12, June.
    13. van den Boogaard, Vanessa & Beach, Rachel, 2023. "Tax and Governance in Rural Areas: The Implications of Inefficient Tax Collection," Working Papers 17934, Institute of Development Studies, International Centre for Tax and Development.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:54:y:2018:i:1:p:1-17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FJDS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.