State accountability – More than where does our money go

This series is for those who read “Do You Pay Your Taxes?” and wanted more. The voices in that article asked honest questions. Where does our money go? Why does the system feel rigged? Why do women bear the heaviest burden?

This series provides the answers, one layer at a time. Each piece examines a different dimension of tax justice through a feminist political economy lens. Together, they reveal the architecture of a system designed by the powerful, for the powerful. And they show what it takes to change it.

Some examples reappear across pieces. This is deliberate. Certain mechanisms—presumptive tax, the taxation of necessities, the unpaid care economy, the invisibility of informal workers—are so foundational that they deserve to be seen from multiple angles. Each time we return to them, we see another layer of how they operate.

This series focuses on women. Not because they are the only ones made invisible by the system, but because their exclusion exposes tax injustice most clearly. Men are also excluded, also unseen. And women are not a single story. The market trader, the rural farmer, the woman with a disability—each faces different barriers. This article asks: what does it mean for the state to be accountable? 

The question that opened the series

She asked it in the first article. A woman in Kampala. 

“I pay for everything myself. Water, electricity, garbage, security. So tell me. Where does our money go?”

She has paid taxes for fifteen years. Market fees. Presumptive tax. VAT on every purchase. 

She has never seen a government clinic with drugs. Never seen her taxes build a road she can use. Never received a grant, a pension, a service.

Her question is simple. The answer is not.

This article is about that question. But it is also about the questions that lie behind it: 

Who decides how revenue is raised and spent? 

Who bears the burden when the state fails? 

What happens when the deal between citizen and state is broken?

Accountability is more than knowing where the money goes. It is about power, responsibility, and remedy.

The narrow view: transparency as accountability

Conventional wisdom holds that accountability begins with transparency. Publish budgets. Report on spending. Let citizens see.

This matters. Without transparency, corruption flourishes. Without visibility, citizens cannot even begin to ask questions.

But transparency alone is not enough.

Budgets are published in technical language, in formats most women cannot access. Women with low literacy, no internet, or limited time are shut out. The information exists, but it might as well not.

Transparency without the power to act is not accountability. It is performance.

Accountability begins with revenue

Accountability starts with how money is raised, not just how it is spent.

A government that collects revenue unfairly cannot spend it justly. The structure of taxation sets the terms for everything that follows.

In many African economies, tax systems rely heavily on consumption taxes. VAT. Fuel taxes. Market levies. Easy to collect. Steady income.

They also place a disproportionate burden on low‑income households.

Women earn less. They hold fewer assets. They pay a higher share of their income through these taxes. They pay every day, on every purchase. Their contribution is constant. They are rarely counted as taxpayers.

When the revenue system is regressive, the state is already not accountable to those who pay the most relative to their means. Accountability must begin with fair collection.

Accountability is not one thing

It is policy. Law. Administration. Enforcement.

Policy. Who decides what to tax and who pays? Who carries the burden and who is protected? Is the woman in the market consulted? Does the revenue agency know her name? Does it recognise her as a taxpayer within its design?

Law. Who sets the legal boundaries of obligation and relief? Is the law examined for who it benefits and who it burdens? Are gender audits conducted before it is passed? In most countries, they are not. Tax laws are drafted in rooms where she has no representation.

Administration. Is the revenue office accessible, transparent, and responsive to women’s conditions? When she seeks service, is she treated with dignity? Or is she harassed, extorted, or neglected? Is there a safe way to complain? Does anyone listen? Are complaints investigated and resolved?

Enforcement. Whose compliance matters? Do tax collectors respect her? Or do they rely on intimidation, informal payments, and the seizure of goods? Does the system target the visible and spare the powerful?

Each of these dimensions should expand women’s:

• Choice – whether she can decide how to earn, spend, and comply without coercion from regressive taxes or informal demands.

• Voice – whether her realities shape tax decisions and her presence reduces systemic bias and exclusion.

• Power – whether she participates in setting the rules and negotiating them, and to shield herself from control, abuse, or retaliation.

• Resources – whether taxation translates into public value equitably between women and men.

• Safety – whether she can engage with tax authorities without fear of harassment, extortion, or retaliation.

When they do not, the system is not accountable.

Accountability is not just knowing where her money goes. It is knowing whether the system was designed for her—or designed to take from her.

Who decides on the revenue side?

Who decides what to tax, who pays, and who is exempt? Who sets the rates? Who designs the enforcement mechanisms?

On the spending side, there are examples of women’s participation: budget groups in South Africa, participatory budgeting in Brazil, gender‑responsive fiscal analysis in Uganda. Women have carved spaces to influence how public money is spent.

But the revenue side remains largely closed.

Where are the women shaping tax laws before they are passed? Where are women’s organisations consulted on tax rates, exemptions, administrative procedures? Where are the gender‑equity criteria in tax policy design?

They are largely absent. Tax policy is made in rooms where women are not present, where gender expertise is not invited, and where those consulted are business associations and corporations—not the women who pay regressive taxes every day.

This absence is not neutral. Tax laws are written without asking: how will this affect the woman in the market? How will this affect the woman who cannot afford a tax lawyer? How will this affect the woman whose labour is already stretched?

Accountability on the revenue side is not just about transparent budgets. It is about who gets to decide how revenue is raised. Until women are in that room, accountability remains incomplete.

Accountability for what the state does – and does not do

Accountability is not only about preventing theft but also ensuring delivery.

Citizens contribute through taxes but often experience weak public services. Clinics without drugs. Schools without teachers. Roads that flood.

In Kampala, a woman pays her trading licence at City Hall. She pays presumptive tax. She pays VAT on everything she buys for resale. Fifteen years.

The road outside her market has been unpaved for all fifteen. When it rains, she wades through mud to reach her stall. The clinic nearest her home has no drugs. The primary school her grandchildren attend has one teacher for eighty children.

She has paid taxes for fifteen years. She cannot name a single public service that functions.

Accountability must include a duty to provide services and to remedy when they are absent. When the state fails to deliver, it is not just inefficient. It is a breach of the social contract.

Where the burden goes

When the state underfunds services, the work does not disappear. It shifts.

Women absorb it. They fill the gaps in care when health systems lack staff or supplies. They manage household consumption when prices rise. They adjust their labour to maintain basic stability.

A clinic closure means a woman walks further to find care. 

A school fee means a girl stays home. 

A cut to water infrastructure means a woman carries more.

This is not incidental. It is patterned. And it is a form of accountability failure.

The state that cuts services is not held accountable for the increased unpaid labour that results. The question is not only where the money goes, but where the burden goes.

Enforcement without remedy is not accountability

Accountability must be enforceable.

Citizens need avenues to challenge unfair tax policies, seek redress for harm, hold officials accountable. Courts, ombuds offices, tax tribunals should be accessible and effective.

In practice, these avenues are often closed to women. Legal aid is scarce. Procedures are complex. Fees are prohibitive. Fear of retaliation silences many who speak out.

When a woman is harassed by a tax official, she rarely takes the case to court. When a community is denied services they paid for, they rarely sue the state.

Accountability must include mechanisms that work for those who need them most. It must be enforceable, not just aspirational.

Accountability does not stop at borders

Illicit financial flows and international tax rules affect the revenue available for public services. When multinationals shift profits to tax havens, African governments lose billions. When global tax rules are written in forums where they have limited voice, their sovereignty is constrained.

African governments are accountable to their citizens to protect revenue from being siphoned offshore. This requires international cooperation, but also domestic political will. It requires transparency in global tax governance. It requires that women’s perspectives are included in those debates—because the loss of revenue lands on their bodies and in their hours.

(For a deeper look, see the earlier article on Illicit Financial Flows.)

What is owed to those who were never seen?

Tax systems are built on histories of extraction. Colonialism extracted resources without consent. Structural adjustment programmes forced cuts to public services. Unequal trade rules shaped the economies African states inherited.

These legacies shape who pays and who benefits today. The tax systems that burden informal workers and consumption are not neutral; they carry the weight of history.

Accountability must look backward as well as forward. It must ask: how can current policy redress past harms? This could mean targeted investments in sectors where women have been most excluded, or policies that redistribute resources to those who have carried the heaviest load for generations.

This is rarely part of tax justice debates. It should be.

Accountability to the generations that come

Tax policy decisions today affect the economic security of future generations, especially women.

Pensions are a clear example. When women work informally for decades, they build no contribution history. They retire with nothing. The state that collected their taxes offers no security in old age.

Environmental sustainability is another. Fiscal choices that favour extractive industries without adequate regulation can degrade land and water that future generations depend on.

Accountability includes a duty to ensure long‑term well‑being, not just short‑term gains. The question “Where does our money go?” must be answered not only for today, but for the generations to come.

The question that remains

The woman in Kampala asked where her money goes. It was a demand for accountability.

But accountability is not just an answer. It is a relationship of power, responsibility, and remedy.

It begins with fair revenue collection. It requires delivery of services. It recognises when burdens are shifted onto women and demands that this be addressed. It insists on representation and enforceability. It extends beyond borders, looks backward to redress history, and looks forward to protect the future.

The state that takes must also give. The citizen who pays must also be seen.

The question that opened the series has led us here. But the answer is not a number. It is a challenge: to redefine accountability so that it includes visibility, voice, redress, and redistribution.

When the Kampala woman asks again, she deserves more than a report. She deserves a state that answers.

The next article asks: what would a tax system that actually sees women look like?

Note: This series is now being developed into a book, The Economic Ghost: Tax Is Not Math. It Is Power, which expands and deepens the analysis. For more, see [link].