Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Tax collection presents a unique challenge in less-developed economies with large informal sectors. Research on tax collection in these economies has primarily focused on corruption (Ghura, 1998), the informal economy (Slemrod &Weber, 2012) or policy-based solutions to tax collection (Stella, 1992), but few studies have examined the role of citizens as partners in compliance. Using data gathered from sources including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the International Center for Tax and Development, we construct a ranking of Sub-Saharan African countries based on measures of size of the informal economy, corruption and tax effort. We then randomly select three countries from the top third, middle third and lower third of the ranking index to conduct in depth case studies. For the case studies, we draw on historical institutionalism (Thelen & Steinmo, 1992) and the “citizen, customer, partner” framework (Thomas, 2012) to analyze how and if coproduction is utilized to produce more efficient tax collection outcomes. This paper fits within the “Tax Policy & Administration” conference track.