Tax violence

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 has answered, one layer at a time. It has traced the architecture of a system designed by the powerful, for the powerful. It has shown how women are taxed without being counted, how daily levies extract without record, how care and labour are stolen without compensation, how governments take and never give.

Now we name what this system produces. Violence.

She asked 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?”

We have followed her question through sixteen articles. Through the market fees that leave no trace. Through the pension that never comes. Through the clinic without drugs. Through the unlit streets, the crowded buses, the tax havens, the broken contract.

Now we name what we have found.

Violence.

Violence is not only a fist.

It is the system that takes her money and gives nothing back.

It is the tax code that taxes her body – for menstruating, for becoming pregnant, for giving birth – as if these were luxuries.

It is the state that underfunds her clinic, then expects her to walk further, wait longer, pay more.

It is the bank that demands proof she does not have, because her payments were never recorded in her name.

It is the husband who grabs her cash earnings because she has no financial identity, no bank account, no way to say no.

It is the street with no light, the bus with no safety, the toilet with no lock.

It is the erasure. Forty years of payments, nothing official. A lifetime of work, no pension. She existed. She paid. The system has no record.

This is tax violence.

It is not neglect. It is not oversight. It is design.

The system was built without her. Built on assumptions that do not fit her life. Built to extract from the powerless, protect the powerful.

Every failure we have documented in this series is a choice. The generator has no fuel because the money went elsewhere. The clinic has no drugs because the money went elsewhere. The ambulance will not move because the money went elsewhere.

Elsewhere is not nowhere. Elsewhere is ministers’ travel, contracts for the connected, debt repayment, tax havens.

Elsewhere is a choice.

Each of these is a form of violence. But they are not generic. They are tax violence – harm, control, intimidation, or injury that arises from tax policy, taxation law, tax administration, and enforcement.

Economic tax violence

She pays a higher share of her income in taxes than the wealthy. VAT on everything. Market fees every morning. Garbage fees. Toilet fees. A multiplicity of payments that never stop.

The system forces her to pay constantly. It collects from her relentlessly.

Yet she is excluded from taxpayer records. Her payments are recorded as revenue, not as hers. When she needs a loan, the bank asks for proof. She has receipts in a plastic bag. The system has no record she exists. When she reaches old age, there is no pension. Forty years of contributions, erased.

This is economic tax violence. The system forces her to pay, then refuses to count her.

Reproductive tax violence

The system taxes the body.

VAT on sanitary products is a tax on menstruation. Antenatal care paid out of pocket is a tax on pregnancy. Delivery fees, postnatal costs, breastfeeding support – all taxed, all treated as optional expenses rather than biological necessities.

When the system fails to fund sexual and reproductive health services, the consequences multiply. Teenage pregnancies rise. Child motherhood becomes common. Maternal morbidity and mortality climb.

A woman in Mukono gives birth on a concrete floor because there is no bed. A girl drops out of school because there is no separate toilet, no pad, no dignity.

This is reproductive tax violence. The tax system taxes what it should protect, then underfunds the services that would prevent harm.

Public space tax violence

Tax revenue that could fund safe public spaces goes elsewhere. Streets are unlit. Public transport is unsafe. Toilets lack locks. Schools lack separate facilities. Markets lack sanitary bins. There are no pedestrian crossings, no walkways.

These are tax‑funded failures. They enable gender‑based violence. Women are groped on crowded buses. They are attacked on dark streets. They are vulnerable in toilets without safety.

A girl stays home during menstruation because the school has no girls’ facility. She falls behind. She drops out. Her education ends. Her future narrows.

This is public space tax violence. It is the violence of spaces not designed for women, funded by taxes not collected with their safety in mind.

Care tax violence

Women do more than three‑quarters of the world’s unpaid care work. Cooking, cleaning, childcare, elder care, fetching water, collecting firewood.

This work is a non‑monetary tax. It is compulsory. It is extracted by the state’s failure to provide services. The economy depends on it. It is never counted.

The state also taxes the necessities of care. Cooking fuel, food, cleaning products – VAT on everything the woman who manages the household must buy. She is taxed for the work she is already not paid for.

When the state collects revenue but does not invest in care‑reducing infrastructure – water facilities, rural electrification, community roads, affordable childcare – the care tax violence compounds.

A clinic closure means a woman walks further. A school fee means she works longer. A cut to water infrastructure means she carries more.

This is care tax violence. It is the theft of hours, years, lives.

Dignity tax violence

She pays for decades. The system takes. It does not record.

She carries used sanitary pads in her bag because there is no bin in the toilet. She goes without pads because they are too expensive. Her uniform is soiled with blood because she cannot afford alternatives. She is shamed, invisibilised, erased.

When she needs a loan, she has no proof. When she needs a pension, she has no history. She existed. She paid. The system has no record.

This is dignity tax violence. It is the violence of being treated as if you never existed, while the system lives off your labour.

Who perpetrates tax violence?

Tax violence is a deliberate outcome of choices made by those who run the system.

The executive sets taxation priorities. It decides whether government wants to raise more revenue, reduce taxes, attract investment, fund services, or introduce incentives. It chooses.

The Ministry of Finance designs tax policy. It decides which taxes to introduce, increase, reduce, or remove. It decides what to tax and who pays. It may choose regressive rates over progressive ones. It drafts the tax bills that go to Parliament. Women are nearly absent in the room.

Parliament enacts these laws. It could demand transparency. It could hold hearings where women testify. It could amend bills to protect the vulnerable. It does not.

The Head of State signs the taxation bills into law. The final approval carries the weight of office. It is given without demanding justice for those who will bear the burden.

The Revenue Authority assesses, administers, and collects taxes. It often excludes informal workers from formal taxpayer registers, but does not exclude them from paying taxes. Tax officials collect. They have the power to demand, to threaten, to seize. They can choose to respect a woman’s dignity. They may choose extortion, harassment, violence.

Courts resolve disputes. They could provide remedy for women who are harmed. But courts are inaccessible, expensive, slow. Women who are abused by tax officials rarely see a courtroom.

Then there is the spending side. The same executive sets spending priorities. The Ministry of Finance allocates funds. Other ministries and local governments spend them. Parliament approves the budget. The same officials who collect her taxes also decide how the revenue is used.

They send money to tax havens instead of hospitals. They award contracts to connected companies instead of building clinics. They approve travel budgets for ministers whose children study abroad because national education is lacking. They fund treatment overseas for officials whose wives deliver in foreign hospitals because maternity care is absent.

A minister’s child attends a private school abroad. A parliamentarian’s wife gives birth in a Nairobi hospital while women in Mukono deliver on concrete floors. A tax official’s family flies to India for a heart operation because the local heart institute has no equipment, no generator, no reliable electricity.

The same system that collects her taxes funds their comfort. The same officials who enforce her compliance protect their own. The same laws that burden her exempt them.

This is not a failure of the system. It is a choice made by those who run it.

They choose where the money goes. They choose who benefits. They choose who is protected and who is exposed.

They choose her violence.

She told us. We listened.

“I pay for everything myself. Where does our money go?”

That question was evidence. Evidence of a system that extracts, that erases, that harms.

The series has traced that evidence. Now we name it.

Tax violence is the culmination. It is what happens when a system is built without women, for the powerful, and never held accountable.

The question that remains

Idah Nantale survived child birth. She slept on the ground, but she lived.

How many did not?

The woman who bled out. The girl who dropped out. The woman whose earnings were grabbed. The woman erased from every record.

They paid taxes their whole lives. The system gave them nothing.

Now the question returns to you.

The woman in Kampala asked where her money goes. It goes to a system that enables violence against her.

The question is not whether she contributed. She did. Every dawn. Every coin. Every day.

The question is whether we will demand it back.

The final article asks what we do next. How we organise. How we demand. How we build the tax system that sees us all.

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].