Electronic Services and Tax Compliance: Evidence from Medium and Small Businesses in Burkina Faso

Electronic tax services represent a promising opportunity to strengthen business tax compliance in developing countries, particularly in Africa, where the level of business informality remains high. These services offer more inclusive, secure, and rapid access to tax processes to enable businesses to meet their tax obligations more efficiently. The use of electronic platforms also helps businesses to maintain more accurate financial records, which improves the quality of tax returns and enhances the perception of the effectiveness of controls by tax authorities. In addition, these technologies increase the transparency and predictability of the tax system by providing reliable and easily accessible data for tax calculations. They also enable governments to encourage the formalisation of informal businesses by introducing tax incentives or reducing certain taxes on digital transactions. This approach, increasingly adopted by African governments, aims to modernise tax systems while addressing the challenges of mobilising domestic resources and integrating informal businesses into the formal economy.

In Burkina Faso, the government took a decisive step in April 2018 by launching eSINTAX, a digital platform dedicated to the declaration and payment of taxes. This initiative is part of a broader drive towards tax modernisation, aimed at improving compliance, reducing tax evasion, and bringing more businesses into the formal tax framework.

Summary of ICTD Working Paper 209.