Transition Fiscale Et Regressivite Des Impots Domestiques Indirects En Afrique Sub-Saharienne[Fiscal Transition System And Indirect Taxes In Sub-Saharan Africa]

Developing countries in general and the Africans ones in particular, have been determined to launch fiscal reforms since the beginning of the 80’s to replace imported fiscal systems by the ones which correspond to their socio-economic context. One of those reforms called fiscal transition is what we talk about in this paper. It consists to substitute domestic taxes to custom and excise duties. The literature shows that most African countries are currently right in the middle of this reform process. The study of this reform needs to take on account the distortive impact on market equilibriums (=efficiency effect) as well as the redistributive impact (=equity effect). In order to do so, this work tries to examine if the fiscal transition policy as it is applied in most African countries, is harmful to the principle of equity in SSA. The fiscal incidence and the optimal tax theories provide us with a reference framework. In addition to that, the partial equilibrium approach based on Mirrlees and Diamond (1971) model shows us that the fiscal transition policy is not harmful to the principle of equity and the indirect domestic taxes are rather progressives than being regressive in SSA.