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LeadAfrik
Advanced · Self-paced2026 Edition

Tax Policy & Administration

How to design a tax system that raises revenue without wrecking the economy — and how to actually collect it. Income, VAT, property, and corporate tax, the hard-to-tax informal sector, and the administration that determines whether any of it works.

8

Modules

~6h 50m

Reading time

Advanced

Level

Self-paced

Format

§

Syllabus

  1. 01

    The tax-policy problem

    Balancing revenue, equity, efficiency, and administrability — and the developing-country tax-ratio gap that frames every African reform.

    ~45 minModule 01
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  2. 02

    Designing an income tax

    Base definition, the rate schedule, thresholds and brackets, and the Mirrlees optimal-tax result restated for practitioners.

    ~55 minModule 02
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  3. 03

    VAT — the workhorse tax

    The credit-invoice mechanism, the registration threshold, exemption vs zero-rating, and the refund problem that breaks VAT in practice.

    ~55 minModule 03
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  4. 04

    Taxing the informal sector

    Presumptive and turnover regimes, the hard-to-tax, and whether chasing the informal sector is worth the administrative cost.

    ~50 minModule 04
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  5. 05

    Property and wealth taxation

    Land value tax, the rating gap, and why the most efficient tax economists know is the least used in African revenue systems.

    ~45 minModule 05
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  6. 06

    Corporate tax and the international problem

    Profit shifting, BEPS, the Pillar Two global minimum, and tax incentives in the race to the bottom for FDI.

    ~55 minModule 06
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  7. 07

    Tax administration as policy

    Registration, withholding, third-party data, eTIMS and iTax — why administration is policy, and the compliance-cost question.

    ~55 minModule 07
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  8. 08

    Reform politics and the revenue authority

    Semi-autonomous revenue authorities, the Finance Bill process, and the political economy lesson of Kenya's 2024 Finance Bill.

    ~50 minModule 08
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How to use this course

Start with module 01 if the material is new; skip ahead if you have prior exposure. Each module is self-contained but the arc is sequential — the projects in the final module assume the toolkit from modules 1-11. Every module ends with key takeaways and a curated further-reading list with primary sources.