The Politics of Taxation and Tax Reform in Times of Crisis: Covid-19 and Attitudes Towards Taxation in Sierra Leone

A key question facing governments is whether the pandemic has changed attitudes towards taxation and what this means for tax reform. Given that the history of tax policy in high-income countries reveals a link between periods of crisis and significant shifts in attitudes towards taxation, could the same be true in low-income countries? Little research has been done on this potential dynamic and taxpayer perceptions of progressive tax reform in these contexts is not well understood. In this paper we explore the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on attitudes toward taxation and unpack what the crisis reveals about the dynamics and politics of taxation. We use novel survey data from Sierra Leone collected before the pandemic, shortly after the pandemic’s onset, and for almost a year afterwards. Summary of Working Paper 166.