International Centre for Tax and Development

📢 : Consultancy opportunity in policy engagement and communications

ICTD is seeking a Policy Engagement and Communications Specialist to support its work on tax and global development.

🧩 About the role: The consultant will contribute to strengthening how ICTD engages with policy audiences and communicates research on international tax and development, helping ensure findings reach and inform relevant stakeholders.

🌍 Who should apply: We welcome applications from candidates with experience in policy engagement, communications, and/or international tax and development – particularly those with a strong understanding of working across global policy contexts.

📄 How to apply: Find full details, including scope of work, deliverables, and requirements here: https://ow.ly/tP0o50ZfU0S

📸DC Studio/Freepik

Join us for the launch of new research on checkpoints and revenue in conflict settings!

From Myanmar to Colombia, spanning East India, Afghanistan, Iran and Venezuela, contributors will present new research on how checkpoints shape governance and everyday life in conflict contexts. The presentation will be followed by a discussion of the implications for policy and future research.

The research was recently published in a special issue of Development and Change, drawing on a partnership between ICTD, DIIS - Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier and the Centre on Armed Groups.

Webinar details:
📆Tuesday, 30 June
🕐1p.m UTC / 2pm BST/ 9am EDT
🔗Online attendance only, register now: https://ow.ly/hizZ50ZfBJR

Pakistan has introduced significant tax reforms under global frameworks like the OECD/G20 BEPS Action Plan and the Common Reporting Standard. But integrating these into a complex domestic fiscal environment, given its political and economic ecosystem, remains an ongoing challenge.

🌏 Muzammal Rasheed's case study, part of ICTD's cross-country project on international tax implementation in lower-income counties, examines Pakistan's experience across four areas: tax treaties, transfer pricing, exchange of information, and digital economy taxation.

⚠️ He finds that, while overall transparency and compliance in the fiscal landscape have improved since these reforms were adopted, limited enforcement capacity and a fragmented tax system continue to cause inefficiencies.

Read the rest of his analysis here ➡️ https://ow.ly/iVCs50Zccj8

📸 mtcurado/iStock

Lower-income countries are often the most affected by the challenges of taxing cross-border transactions and the digital economy -- yet they have had limited influence over the international rules designed to address them.

📝 Dan Ngabirano's working paper on Uganda, part of ICTD's cross-country comparative project, examines the country's implementation of international tax standards across three areas: the integrity of its tax treaty environment, the strength of its exchange of information frameworks, and the effectiveness of its digital services tax.

🟢 The findings show the particular challenges facing countries that are expected to implement standards developed elsewhere -- and what meaningful international tax cooperation might need to look like if lower-income country contexts are better accounted for.

Read the full study here ➡️https://ow.ly/JOsq50ZccRa

📸emretopdemir/iStock

The relationship between international tax standards and domestic policy priorities is rarely straightforward -- as Kenya's experience shows.

🟢 ICTD's Daisy Ogembo examines how Kenya has engaged with global norms across four areas: tax treaties, transfer pricing, exchange of information, and the taxation of digital services, as part of the project ‘Comparative Perspectives on International Tax from the Global South’.

🖼️ The findings reveal a mixed picture: meaningful modernisation in some areas alongside persistent resource constraints, inconsistent policymaking, and external dependency.

💻 One notable finding concerns digital services taxation -- Kenya's decision to move away from a digital services tax towards a significant economic presence framework reflects not just a technical choice, but the diplomatic pressures that smaller economies can face from larger ones in international policy negotiations.

Read the full working paper ➡️ https://ow.ly/swpx50Z9rGw

📸Curt Carnemark, World Bank/Flickr

Lower-income countries (LICs) have an ambivalent relationship with international tax standards.

⚖️ On the one hand, adopting them allows countries to draw on models, tools, and experience developed over decades by the global North. On the other hand, such standards have not historically been developed with LICs’ interests, priorities, and capabilities in mind.

So how do LICs navigate them in practice?

🌍 In a new ICTD research project, entitled ‘Comparative Perspectives on International Tax from the Global South’, we collaborated with local researchers in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Uganda, and Zambia to investigate how these countries are implementing standards on:

✅ exchange of information
✅ transfer pricing
✅tax treaties
✅ digital services taxation

Today, we are launching the first in a series of studies, focusing on Zambia. International tax law specialist Kennedy Munyandi, LL.M. finds that the country has been slow to adopt and implement these standards.

🟢 He attributes this pattern to limited awareness of their revenue potential, technical capacity constraints, burdensome bureaucratic processes, and the absence of a coherent national policy framework for international taxation.

The findings also flag a specific gap in judicial capacity: both the Tax Appeals Tribunal and the higher courts face significant challenges handling international tax matters, particularly transfer pricing disputes.

Read the full findings here ➡️ https://ow.ly/OmWR50Z8TRb

📸africa924/iStock

If a country receives offshore financial data from other governments, does it actually have the tools to use it?

📝 A new ICTD paper examines this question through Nigeria's experience implementing the Common Reporting Standard (CRS). The research finds that while CRS-based audits have generated measurable additional revenue, use of that data is uneven -- information on individuals and small businesses remains largely unused due to capacity constraints at the state level.

🟢 The core finding: access to offshore information is necessary, but not sufficient. What matters is the institutional capacity to turn that data into real enforcement.

Read the full findings here ➡️ https://ow.ly/T3g050Z5CFf

Short on time? Check out the 2-page summary below ⬇️

When Ian Kananura (2018/19 alum of ICTD’s Research on Tax and Development course) first began his career in real estate financing and construction, he did not imagine his work would eventually lead him into cryptocurrency taxation, artificial intelligence, and tax policy reform.

We sat down with Ian to ask him about his career journey, the growing importance of research-informed tax policy, and why domestic revenue mobilisation will be central to Africa’s future.

🔗Read his story here: https://ow.ly/nHUS50Z64QT

From real estate to crypto in Uganda: navigating tax policy in a changing world - ICTD Ian Kananura Mwesigye reflects on his career in Uganda and the growing importance of research-informed tax policy for Africa’s future.

Last month, we launched a national taxpayer compliance survey in Eswatini, in close partnership with the Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS), aimed at building a clearer picture of taxpayer behaviour, compliance costs, and perceptions of the tax system.

🤝 The study builds on a long-standing collaboration between ICTD and the ERS, which began in 2019 with a previous joint taxpayer survey, and have since covered a range of research related to tax administration, taxpayer communication, digital filing systems, and payment methods, among others.

Researcher Celeste Scarpini, who leads on the survey on behalf of ICTD, said the work responds to the ERS's interest in updating and expanding the evidence base on taxpayer experiences.

💻 Meanwhile, "on a personal level, I want to better understand the costs borne by taxpayers when digitsation policies mandate the exclusive use of digital tools, and are implemented at a very rapid pace," she said.

Read more about the survey and our partnership here 👇
https://ow.ly/vIb550Z53Ff

📸Eswatini Revenue Service