Bringing Property Owners into the Tax Net: Avenues of Fiscal Capacity and Local Governance

This research project partnered with the Senegalese tax administration to conduct a randomized evaluation of the introduction of a modernized property tax system in Dakar. This new system includes a modernized registry aggregating geolocated cadastral data with taxpayers’ information, a new data collection and management application, and an intensive fiscal census to update the database. The new application also allows the testing of a new simplified automated valuation method to address the fuzziness of the current valuation system (mostly based on tax officials’ discretion). 194 cadaster sections (including 77,000 plots) were randomly allocated between a control group and a treatment group receiving the program, allowing the measurement of the value-added of the new system. The project is currently in advanced stages of this project with a focus on assessing the medium and long-term effects of the ongoing property tax campaign, regarding fiscal outcomes, local governance outcomes, and the incidence of the property tax and its effects on the real estate market. This project is a unique opportunity to build a long-term relationship with the Senegalese tax administration, which expressed a strong interest in continuing this project and developing new ones.