Taxation policy and law: Who decides?

This series moves from lived reality to the rules. The first article showed how colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy built the tax system. Now we ask: who writes the rules today? And if the rules were written without us, whose interests do they serve?

We look at three levels – global, regional, national. At every level, we ask the same questions: who decides? who benefits? who pays? who is excluded?

The Kampala woman asked a simple question.

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

She pays taxes every day. Market fees. VAT. Levies on fuel and soap.

The system takes. It never gives back.

To understand why, we must look at who writes the rules. Not at the market. Not at the clinic. In the rooms where tax policy is made.

Those rooms are far from her stall. They are in global capitals, regional headquarters, and national ministries. The people in those rooms have never carried water. They have never paid a market fee. They have never been groped because the street had no light.

They write rules that serve themselves.

Global level: who controls the architecture?

The OECD writes the global tax rules. The Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development. Rich countries created it. Rich countries control it.

Its rules are written by rich countries, for rich countries. They are called the OECD Model Tax Convention. They are not neutral. They are weapons.

The UN has an alternative model. It is more balanced. It gives more weight to the countries where profits are actually earned. But the UN model is weak. Rich countries ignore it.

Bilateral tax treaties – thousands of them – govern cross‑border income. Many treaties cap the taxes that African countries can collect from foreign investors. They protect investor profits. They starve public services.

Multinational corporations use these rules to shift profits to tax havens. Transfer pricing, shell companies, legal loopholes – all permitted. Country‑by‑country reporting exists, but it is not public. Anti‑avoidance rules are weak.

A major debate is now unfolding. Many developing countries want a UN tax convention – a democratic system where all countries have a voice. Rich countries resist. They prefer the OECD.

Who decides at the global level? Not the woman in Kampala. Not her government. The same rich countries that have always decided.

Regional level: solidarity or competition?

In Africa, regional bodies shape tax policy. The African Union. The African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF). The East African Community. ECOWAS. SADC.

ATAF produces model laws. They could promote cooperation. Instead, countries compete.

Tax holidays. Reduced corporate rates. Investment incentives. Countries race to the bottom. The revenue loss is made up by taxing consumption. VAT rises. The poor pay.

Regional trade agreements reduce tariffs. Tariffs once provided steady revenue. Now governments replace that revenue with VAT. The burden shifts to ordinary people.

Some regional documents mention gender equality. Few translate into tax law.

Are there regional standards on illicit financial flows and tax transparency? Yes, some. Enforcement is weak.

Do regional courts recognise tax justice as part of social and economic rights? Rarely. Tax is still seen as technical, not human.

Who decides at the regional level? The same interests that dominate globally. Ministers of finance. Business associations. Not the woman in the market.

National level: who pays, who benefits, who is left behind?

Now we come to the country. The place where taxes are collected. Where budgets are spent. Where the Kampala woman lives and works and pays.

Income tax laws define what counts as income. Unpaid care work is not income. Subsistence farming is not income. Informal trade is barely recognised. The law assumes a formal salary, a payslip, an employer.

Joint taxation still penalises married women in some countries. A woman’s earnings are added to her husband’s income. She is taxed at a higher rate for working. The law punishes her for working.

Presumptive tax taxes turnover, not profit. A woman selling tomatoes pays the same as a high‑margin electronics dealer. The law does not ask about her costs, her losses, her spoilage.

Consumption tax laws – VAT, excise duties, import tariffs. Governments decide which goods are zero‑rated, exempt, or standard‑rated. Food, water, fuel, sanitary products, children’s items – all can be taxed. A tax on sanitary pads is not inevitable. It is a choice. A choice that taxes women for being female.

Property and wealth tax laws – low coverage, outdated valuations, widespread exemptions. The law protects wealthy owners. The market trader who pays a daily fee for her stall has no such protection. She cannot delay. She cannot negotiate. She cannot hide.

Corporate tax laws – tax holidays, reduced rates, investment allowances. These provisions reduce revenue. The lost revenue is replaced by consumption taxes. VAT rises. The market trader pays for the corporate tax break.

Tax administration laws – registration, filing, payment, audit, penalties. Are they accessible to informal workers, people with low literacy, limited internet? Rarely. Legal provisions for complaints, redress, and protection from harassment are weak or absent.

Budget and appropriation laws– how revenue is allocated. Does the law mandate gender‑responsive budgeting? In some countries, yes, but only on the expenditure side. Uganda’s Public Finance Management Act, for example, requires gender and equity budgeting for spending. It says nothing about how revenue is raised.

Legal requirements for public participation exist on paper. They are often ignored.

Who decides at the national level? Ministries of finance. Revenue authorities. Parliamentary committees. Men with formal salaries, urban addresses, and no memory of carrying water.

Not her. Not her government. Not her continent. The same people. Always the same people.

Who decides? The policy‑making process

Tax policy is designed by the powerful. Ministries of finance draft. Cabinets approve. Parliaments debate and enact.

International institutions provide models and conditionality. Business associations, tax consultants, and large corporations are consulted.

Women’s organisations are rarely consulted. Informal workers are rarely consulted. Carers are rarely consulted. Market traders, domestic workers, small‑scale farmers – absent.

The process itself excludes. Technical language. Capital city locations. Online consultations. Deadlines that assume flexible time. All of it filters out those who carry the heaviest burdens.

Legal requirements for gender analysis of tax bills are rare. Public participation is often a formality. Parliamentary committees lack gender expertise.

Who decides what is taxed, who pays, who is exempt? Those with power. Those who benefit from the current system. Those who do not bear the cost of its failures.

The architecture of invisibility

Tax systems rely on categories. Formal/informal. Employed/unemployed. Registered/unregistered.

These categories determine who is legible to the state.

But lived reality rarely fits these binaries. A woman selling produce may also be a caregiver, a farmer, a trader, a household manager. Her income is cyclical, seasonal, dependent on social networks. Yet the tax system seeks a single identity: taxpayer, business owner, registered entity.

What cannot be neatly categorised is often poorly governed. And what is poorly governed becomes vulnerable to arbitrary enforcement.

Invisibility is not protection. It is exposure.

Because visibility is double‑edged: it can bring rights, but it can also bring burden. When systems are not designed with equity in mind, visibility tends to mean extraction before it means protection.

The gendered structure of tax law

The question is not only who is taxed, but how tax interacts with gendered economic life.

Women are more likely to operate in informal markets. More likely to engage in unpaid care work alongside income‑generating activity. More likely to manage household survival economies where cash flow is irregular but responsibility is constant.

Yet tax systems are built around assumptions of stable income, formal employment, and separable economic identity.

This mismatch is not accidental. It reflects the historical absence of women in the design of fiscal policy. Where women were not decision‑makers, their economic realities were not primary reference points. Where policy was designed around formal wage labour, care work and informal trade were treated as peripheral.

This is how systems become skewed: not through explicit exclusion alone, but through design that assumes a narrow version of economic life and then universalises it.

What would change if women shaped tax law?

If women shaped tax law, the outcome depends on whether those women bring a feminist lens. Being a woman does not automatically mean feminist analysis. But if the women in the room have a feminist eye – if they see the Kampala woman, her receipts, her care work, her invisibility – then the legal provisions would look different.

Joint taxation would be replaced by individual filing. No penalty for working. No assumption that a woman’s income is secondary.

The definition of “income” would be debated. Unpaid care work would be counted – in satellite accounts, in budget analysis, in policy design.

Presumptive tax would be redesigned. Turnover alone would not determine liability. Costs, margins, and sectoral realities would be factored in.

VAT exemptions would be expanded. Food, water, fuel, sanitary products, children’s items – zero‑rated by law.

Property tax laws would be enforced. Wealthy owners would pay. Loopholes would close.

Tax incentives would be transparent and subject to gender audits. Their revenue cost would be weighed against public spending on care infrastructure.

Budget laws would mandate gender‑responsive budgeting on both revenue and expenditure sides. Ministries would be required to show how tax policies affect women.

Legal provisions for public participation would be enforceable. Women’s organisations would have a seat at the table – not as observers, but as decision‑makers.

These are legal reforms. They are possible.

The Kampala woman is still waiting.

She asked where her money goes. Now we know.

It goes to a system built by colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. It goes to global rules written by the powerful. It goes to regional competition that starves public services. It goes to national laws that tax her body, her care, her survival.

The system was built without her. Policy and law continue on those old assumptions.

But what is built can be rebuilt. A tax system designed with her in mind would not begin with extraction. It would begin with recognition – of what already sustains the economy, of who already carries the burden.

Nothing about this system is accidental. But nothing about it is permanent either.

It was built without us. It will only be counted with us.

Next: What Is Taxed? A Feminist View – what counts as economic value and what disappears?