Differential bunching impacts across the income distribution: Evidence from Zambian tax administrative data

Samuel Bryson, Kwabena Adu-Ababio, Evaristo Mwale and John Rand

No wp-2023-142, WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER)

Abstract: We investigate the behavioural responses of individual taxpayers to changes in marginal personal income tax rates applying empirical bunching methodology to tax administrative data from Zambia over the period from 2014 to 2021. We find evidence for excess bunching at the first kink in the tax schedule for all years but less evidence of bunching at the second and third thresholds. While bunching is considerable and behavioural responses are observed to changes in the location of the kinks over time, bunching at reference points ('round-number bunching') also appears large.

Keywords: Tax bunching; Personal income tax; Zambia; Income distribution; Tax data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-inv, nep-pbe and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publ ... tribution-Zambia.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2023-142

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Siméon Rapin ().