IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-04938960.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Effective Tax Burden on Mobile Network Operators in Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Daouda Bamba

    (FERDI - Fondation pour les Etudes et Recherches sur le Développement International)

  • Alou Adessé Dama

    (FERDI - Fondation pour les Etudes et Recherches sur le Développement International)

  • Grégoire Rota-Graziosi

    (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UCA [2017-2020] - Université Clermont Auvergne [2017-2020] - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, FERDI - Fondation pour les Etudes et Recherches sur le Développement International)

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive analysis of the tax burden on the mobile telecommunications sector across twenty-nine African countries, encompassing both general taxation and sector-specific levies. To conduct this assessment, we develop a model of a representative mobile network operator, referred to as TELCO, and compute its Average Effective Tax Rate (AETR) by incorporating both standard tax obligations and industry-specific fiscal charges. The average AETR is significantly high, ranging from 77 percent to 116 percent (or 44 percent to 83 percent when excluding license fees), depending on the assumed indirect tax incidence. Notably, the AETR exhibits a regressive pattern, whereby the relative tax burden decreases as gross profitability rises. This regressivity is largely attributable to the structural design of the tax system, which relies predominantly on indirect taxation.

Suggested Citation

  • Daouda Bamba & Alou Adessé Dama & Grégoire Rota-Graziosi, 2025. "Effective Tax Burden on Mobile Network Operators in Africa," Working Papers hal-04938960, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04938960
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04938960v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-04938960v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04938960. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.