IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2025-81.html

Digitalisation and the politics of tax in low-income states

Author

Listed:
  • Alex Yeandle

Abstract

The digitalization of low-income economies has made it easier for governments to collect tax, yet many still fail to raise adequate revenues. Why would policy makers in urgent need of resources not fully leverage these new tools? I argue that governments remain constrained by public opinion: digital taxes are perceived as unfair, unaccountable, and lacking tangible benefit among the large groups of voters they affect. As a result public support for digital taxes depends heavily on how they are designed.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Yeandle, 2025. "Digitalisation and the politics of tax in low-income states," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2025-81, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-81
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2025-81-digitalization-politics-tax-low-income-states.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abdoul-Akim Wandaogo & Fayçal Sawadogo & Jesse Lastunen, 2022. "Does the adoption of peer-to-government mobile payments improve tax revenue mobilization in developing countries?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-18, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Marco Manacorda & Andrea Tesei, 2020. "Liberation Technology: Mobile Phones and Political Mobilization in Africa," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 533-567, March.
    3. 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.
    4. Daron Acemoglu & Jacob Moscona & James A. Robinson, 2016. "State Capacity and American Technology: Evidence from the 19th Century," NBER Working Papers 21932, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Raúl Sánchez de la Sierra, 2020. "On the Origins of the State: Stationary Bandits and Taxation in Eastern Congo," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(1), pages 32-74.
    6. Raj Chetty & Adam Looney & Kory Kroft, 2009. "Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1145-1177, September.
    7. Kasara, Kimuli, 2007. "Tax Me If You Can: Ethnic Geography, Democracy, and the Taxation of Agriculture in Africa," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(1), pages 159-172, February.
    8. Meltzer, Allan H & Richard, Scott F, 1981. "A Rational Theory of the Size of Government," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 914-927, October.
    9. Yeandle, Alex, 2025. "Mobile Internet and the Quality of Elections in Low-Income Democracies," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55, pages 1-1, January.
    10. Hjort, Jonas & Tian, Lin, 2025. "The economic impact of internet connectivity in developing countries," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 129143, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Daron Acemoglu & Jacob Moscona & James A. Robinson, 2016. "State Capacity and American Technology: Evidence from the Nineteenth Century," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 61-67, May.
    12. Riley, Emma, 2018. "Mobile money and risk sharing against village shocks," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 43-58.
    13. Seim, Brigitte & Robinson, Amanda Lea, 2020. "Coethnicity and Corruption: Field Experimental Evidence from Public Officials in Malawi," Journal of Experimental Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(1), pages 61-66, April.
    14. Caryn Peiffer & Richard Rose, 2018. "Why Are the Poor More Vulnerable to Bribery in Africa? The Institutional Effects of Services," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(1), pages 18-29, January.
    15. Jonathan L Weigel, 2020. "The Participation Dividend of Taxation: How Citizens in Congo Engage More with the State When it Tries to Tax Them," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(4), pages 1849-1903.
    16. Jonathan L. Weigel & Elie Kabue Ngindu, 2023. "The taxman cometh: Pathways out of a low‐capacity trap in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(360), pages 1362-1396, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Esteban Muñoz-Sobrado & Amedeo Piolatto & Antoine Zerbini & Federica Braccioli, 2024. "The taxing challenges of the state: Unveiling the role of fiscal & administrative capacity in development," Working Papers 2024/05, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    2. Alessandro Belmonte & Desiree Teobaldelli & Davide Ticchi, 2024. "Expected foreign military intervention and demand for state-building: evidence from Mali," Working Papers 493, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    3. Laura Mayoral & Hannes Mueller, 2025. "Rents, Rules or Revolution: A Survey of Institutional Pathways to Peace," Working Papers 1511, Barcelona School of Economics.
    4. Blumenstock, Joshua & Callen, Michael & Faikina, Anastasiia & Fiorin, Stefano & Ghani, Tarek, 2023. "Strengthening Fragile States: Evidence from Mobile Salary Payments in Afghanistan," CEPR Discussion Papers 18254, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Guo, Jingyuan & Deng, Kent, 2024. "Laying off old guards to rebuild state capacity: Deng Xiaoping’s bloodless coup d’etat in post-Mao China, 1980-2000," Economic History Working Papers 126083, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    6. repec:ehl:lserod:126083 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Cédric Chambru & Emeric Henry & Benjamin Marx, 2024. "The Dynamic Consequences of State Building: Evidence from the French Revolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(11), pages 3578-3622, November.
    8. Leopoldo Fergusson & Horacio Larreguy & Juan Felipe Riaño, 2022. "Political Competition and State Capacity: Evidence from a Land Allocation Program in Mexico," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(648), pages 2815-2834.
    9. Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez & Samuel D. Restrepo-Oyola, 2025. "A randomized intervention to gauge preferred tax rates and progressivity," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 32(3), pages 782-804, June.
    10. Chen, Kejing & Guo, Wenqi & Jiang, Lin & Xiong, Xiong & Yang, Mo, 2022. "Does time-space compression affect analyst forecast performance?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    11. López García, Ana Isabel & Berens, Sarah, 2025. "Taxing the wealthy in Haiti: Evidence from a conjoint experiment on property tax preferences," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    12. Yu Hao & Kevin Zhengcheng Liu, 2020. "Taxation, fiscal capacity, and credible commitment in eighteenth‐century China: the effects of the formalization and centralization of informal surtaxes," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 73(4), pages 914-939, November.
    13. Zhipeng Tang & Ziao Mei & Jialing Zou, 2021. "Does the Opening of High-Speed Railway Lines Reduce the Carbon Intensity of China’s Resource-Based Cities?," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-18, July.
    14. Denis Cogneau & Yannick Dupraz & Justine Knebelmann & Sandrine Mesplé-Somps, 2021. "Taxation in Africa from Colonial Times to Present Evidence from former French colonies 1900-2018," Working Papers halshs-03420664, HAL.
    15. Marko Ledić & Ivica Rubil, 2026. "How do indirect taxes reshape tax-benefit-revealed social preferences for redistribution?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 53(1), pages 167-199, February.
    16. Alessandro Belmonte & Vincenzo Bove & Jessica Di Salvatore, 2021. "Donors for tax morale: Evidence from 34 African countries," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-185, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. Maleke Fourati & Victoire Girard & Jeremy Laurent-Lucchetti, 2021. "Sexual violence as a weapon of war," NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series wp2103, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA.
    18. Shruti Rajagopalan & Alex Tabarrok, 2021. "Simple rules for the developing world," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 341-362, December.
    19. Kulka, Amrita & Smith, Cory, 2024. "Population Centers and Coordination : Evidence from County-Seat Wars," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1518, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    20. Christoph Kronenberg, 2021. "New(spaper) evidence of a reduction in suicide mentions during the 19th century US gold rush," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(10), pages 2582-2594, September.
    21. Martin Fiszbein, 2017. "Agricultural Diversity, Structural Change and Long-run Development: Evidence from the U.S," NBER Working Papers 23183, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-81. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    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.