International Centre for Tax and Development

Artificial intelligence is generating growing interest among tax administrations across Africa, with potential applications ranging from taxpayer services and chatbots to risk assessment, audit selection and fraud detection. But AI does not operate in isolation.

The International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) will not be running its flagship Research on Tax and Development course, due to start in autumn 2026. The difficult decision to suspend the course is due to a reduction in funding for the ICTD’s teaching and learning programme from 2027 onward, with the current cycle formally concluding in December 2026.

The Coalition on Tax Expenditure Reform (COATE), co-founded by the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD), has launched a public consultation on draft voluntary minimum standards for tax expenditure reporting. COATE is inviting feedback from governments, international organisations, researchers, civil society organisations, and other stakeholders. Their input received will help shape the final set of principles and indicators, which will be published later this year.

In early July, I participated in the 34th annual conference of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), which took place in Cali, Colombia. I had studied development economics, worked on tax and public finance for several years, and considered myself familiar with questions of inequality. Yet gender had rarely featured as a central analytical lens in my economic training. The conference challenged some of my assumptions and left me with three key reflections.

As states increasingly digitalise fiscal systems to strengthen revenue capacity, the spread of cashless payments offers new tools for enhancing tax compliance and administrative efficiency. This paper examines how the adoption of cashless payments interacts with tax perceptions among formal businesses in Africa.

The much awaited Co-Lead’s draft protocol on the taxation of income from cross-border services was published on 20 July 2026. Like previously released papers of the workstream, the text likely does not reflect the views of all countries at the negotiating table and might still undergo important changes. Important questions are still left open, and there are several technical issues. However, it proposes a clear approach and should constitute a good basis for further discussions.

The International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) has secured US$1 million from Founders Pledge to fund a new three-year programme of collaborative research to strengthen tax administration in lower-income countries, starting 2027. The funding comes at a time of mounting fiscal pressure for many lower-income countries. Rising debt burdens, reductions in development assistance, and growing demands for investment in public services have increased the importance of generating domestic revenue.

To inform ongoing negotiations on the taxation of cross-border services at the UN, we wrote a study on double tax relief for remote exports of services in 12 major exporting countries – China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States (dowload it here).

Research in Brief 178 On 1 January 2026, Bhutan replaced its fragmented sales tax system with a goods and services tax (GST): a 5 per cent invoice credit consumption tax, economically equivalent to a value added tax, with zero-rated exports and narrower exemptions than earlier proposals. The reform is intended to reduce tax cascading, broaden the domestic tax base, improve taxpayer service, and modernise tax administration to generate more reliable revenue.

Bhutan’s goods and services tax (GST) entered into force on 1 January 2026 under the Goods and Services Tax Act of Bhutan 2020 (GST Act 2020) and Goods and Services Tax (Amendment) Act of Bhutan 2025 (GST (Amendment) Act 2025). The reform replaces a fragmented sales tax regime with a destination based, invoice credit consumption tax, with a 5 per cent standard rate, zero-rated exports, and a narrower exemption structure than earlier proposals.