Countries Must Work Together to Stop Cross-Border Tax Evasion

In 2021 alone, information on assets of nearly EUR 11 trillion held outside the taxpayers' place of residence was exchanged through the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information .

Since 2013, tax administrations collected over EUR 114 billion in tax, interest and penalties through voluntary disclosure programmes and other tax compliance initiatives.

Information exchanged on the Standard helps tax authorities track income so that it can be taxed and support domestic needs. It is therefore critical that African countries promote such cross border support in order to reduce tax evasion.

More African countries will be implementing this Standard in the coming years. Ghana, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Seychelles, have already implemented the Standard while Kenya, Rwanda, Tunisia and Uganda are already making advanced preparations to do so.

African countries will be deprived of much needed resources as long as we struggle to collect all taxes due to them. It is critical that we build local tax authority capacity and work together to support domestic income generation, write Thulani Shongwe and Melissa de Jong for allAfrica.