TITLE:
Macroeconomic Determinants of the Mobilization of Tax Revenues of the Countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU)
AUTHORS:
Issa Larba Kobyagda
KEYWORDS:
Tax Revenues, Tax Pressure, Tax Potential, Tax Effort, Stochastic Border
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.10 No.1,
January
22,
2019
ABSTRACT: This article aims to analyze the fiscal potential of
UEMOA member countries. The question of the fiscal potential of the states is
of great importance since the domestic resources represent a high proportion in
the financing in Plans and strategies of economic and social development. In
this article, we adopt the technique of stochastic border estimation, which is
more intuitive—and potentially more relevant for policies—to measure the
potential and fiscal effort over the period 1990-2017. The results show that
the tax burden is determined by structural factors and that, in most countries,
the tax potential is underutilized. Similarly, the fiscal effort shows poor
performance in terms of resource mobilization in the majority of countries.
These results show that the WAEMU countries can reach or exceed the tax rate of
20% minimum set by the UEMOA if efforts are made to better tax the informal
sector. The main contributions of this article have been to justify empirically
the increase of the minimum pressure rate in the UEMOA from 17% to 20% and to demonstrate
that a better taxation of the agricultural sector would considerably affect the
mobilization of tax revenues.