Attitude Towards Paying Tax, Government Performance And Inflation In Africa

This paper analyses the effect of individuals’ perception of government public policies, confidence in institutions, and economic expectations on the willingness to pay tax, taking into account the moderating role of macroeconomic context such as inflation. The empirical framework is based on a contextual logistic model with more than 140 000 respondents from the Afrobarometer survey data covering Round 4 (2008, 20 countries), Round 5 (2011-2013, 34 countries), Round 6 (2016, 36 countries) and Round 7 (2019, 34 countries) corresponding to the period 2008-2019. The findings reveal that citizens who appreciate the current government performance in creating jobs, fighting corruption, trust in the executive office and have good economic expectations are more willing to pay a tax or fee. Regarding the moderating role of inflation, the findings suggest that individuals’ perception on public policies, their confidence in the president or economic expectation do not attenuate or moderate the negative effects of inflation on attitude towards paying taxes. The findings are robust to sensitivity analyses. They theoretically improve insights into fiscal contract theory and policy implications are discussed.