Staff Writer – The fiscal contract suggests that the government and the governed are bound by the relationship of taxation.
For the relationship to be healthy and achieve positive outcomes for both the government and the governed, it has to be based on consultation.
To advocate and promote consultation, ZITAP has launched a tax perception survey to be conducted over the next month.
The results of the tax perception survey will be shared with the government, including entities such as the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA), the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Zimbabwe Investment Development Authority (ZIDA), and the Ministry of Finance.
Citizen groups, including residents’ associations, informal sector organisations, labour, business associations, the media, and think tanks, will be surveyed and benefit from the findings.
In recent years, the government of Zimbabwe has been changing the tax regime without consultation.
These changes have increased taxes, resulting in a public uproar.
Research shows that compliance with the country’s tax regime not only depends on whether the laws to punish offenders exist, but how citizens perceive the tax environment.
Tax morale, transparency with revenue utilisation, trust in government, and ease of compliance are key factors.
In Zimbabwe, ordinary people, informal traders, civil society, Members of Parliament, and captains of industry have all joined a chorus for the government to revise the tax regime to make it transparent, equitable, efficient, fair, and easy to comply with.
Following successive promises to address these concerns, the government has announced cuts to penalties, fees, and business levies in sectors such as the transport, dairy and livestock industries, though these will need parliament to enact a law to come into effect.
The voice of the ordinary citizen remains largely absent in most of the policy debates.
The Zimbabwe Taxpayers Platform (ZITAP) has therefore launched a tax perception survey to address this gap and amplify the voice of ordinary people.
Such surveys have been rare in the country, exposing an immense gap in citizen consultation in public policy-making.
In 2021, the pan-African research institute, Afrobarometer, surveyed Zimbabweans on their tax perceptions, providing a baseline to the ZITAP survey, but follow-ups have been absent over the past four years.
Beginning in 2025, ZITAP intends to make the taxpayers’ surveys regular enough to gather current perceptions.
In many jurisdictions, tax surveys have helped align tax policy with citizens’ expectations and regularly check the performance of tax policies to adapt them to the needs of society.
To achieve this outcome, ZITAP has embarked on an aggressive campaign to market the survey to various stakeholders.
Click here to take the survey: http://shorturl.at/FrwGW