Effort fiscal en Afrique subsaharienne : les résultats d’une nouvelle base de données

International audienceTax Effort in Sub-Saharan African Countries: Evidence from a New DatasetThis paper proposes (i) a new database of tax revenue for 42 sub-Saharan African countries (SSA) over the period 1980–2015, (ii) an estimate of the tax effort for these countries, and (iii) some replication analyses of previous tax effort estimations. The database results from the statistical information of the African Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In particular, it makes it possible to distinguish tax revenue from the natural resource sector from that of other economic sectors. SSA countries collected on average 13.2 percent of GDP in non-resource tax revenue over the period studied, and their average estimated tax effort is 0.57. In other words, SSA countries could raise 23.2 percent of GDP in non-resource taxes if they fully used their tax potential. In line with previous analyses, we find that countries’ stage of development measured by per-capita income, their financial development, and their trade openness are important factors improving tax revenue, while natural resource endowment and the importance of the agriculture sector reduce unambiguously the non-resource tax-to-GDP ratio. Finally, beyond the originality of the database itself and the empirical results, this work participates explicitly in the replication principle, given its online development with R software (https://data.cerdi.uca.fr/taxeffort/)