The Tax Side of the Pandemic: Shifts in Compliance Attitudes and Perceptions in Rwanda
利用卢旺达调查数据，发现疫情期间纳税人对税收公平性的认知提升40%，且合规态度更取决于公共服务质量，这些变化与团结和爱国情绪相关。
While much knowledge is being generated on the impact of the pandemic, we still know very little on its implications on taxation in lower-income countries. Yet, tax is crucial to fund crisis response and recovery, in addition to broader development plans and expanded government expenditure. This paper starts addressing this gap using an unique dataset of survey data from Rwanda. We document two significant shifts in taxpayers’ views during the pandemic: perceptions about the fairness of the tax system improve by 40 per cent, and their attitudes to compliance become more conditional on the provision of public services of sufficiently good quality. We put these results in the broader context of crisis response. We show that they are not simply linked to individual experiences of the crisis or access to relief, but they are more likely linked to generalised improvements in solidarity and patriotism.