The economic ghost: What does it mean to be an invisible taxpayer?

This is part of a series: "Tax Justice Through a Feminist Lens". The series builds on my previous articles, "Do You Pay Your Taxes?" and "Taxation and the Redistribution of Power" and "The Tax System's Blind Eye to Women". Those articles asked honest questions. Where does our money go? Why does the system feel rigged? Why do women bear the heaviest burden? Who decides what you pay? Who holds the power to design tax systems?

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 ghosts in the economy, but because their invisibility reveals the system's design most clearly. Men are also excluded, also informal, also unseen. And women are not a homogenous group. The market trader in Kampala faces different barriers than a rural farmer, a woman with a disability, a refugee. One of the articles ahead examines these differences directly. For now, we start where the pattern is sharpest: with the women whose daily contributions leave no trace.

Anna trades in Owino market. Second-hand clothes. She has sold there for fifteen years. Every morning she pays a market fee. Every week she pays for garbage collection. When she needs the toilet, she pays for that too. Sometimes she gets a receipt. Often she does not. Her name appears on nothing.

She also pays presumptive tax. Her stall is assessed, a rate applied, the money collected. The tax is the same whether she sells ten garments or a hundred, whether business is good or bad, whether her goods were damaged in the rain, whether she is feeding sick children. The system does not ask. It only collects.

She keeps her receipts in a plastic bag under her stall. Every payment, every fee, every tax—she keeps the paper. The bag is thick with years of contribution. It is her only record.

When she needs a loan to expand her business, the loan officer asks for three years of tax returns. She has receipts in a plastic bag. The loan is denied.

When she thinks about old age, she wonders what will support her. She has paid for fifteen years—market fees, garbage fees, presumptive tax, VAT on everything she buys. But pension systems are designed for formal, continuous employment. Her working life does not fit the mould. She will retire on nothing, or on whatever her children can spare.

When she needs to prove her income for any purpose—to rent a stall in a better location, to apply for a government programme, to show she can afford school fees—she has nothing official. Receipts in a plastic bag do not count.

She pays. She contributes. She has been part of the economy every day for fifteen years. But the system cannot see her.

She is an economic ghost.

What the system cannot see

The previous articles in this series showed how tax systems are not neutral. They are built on assumptions—about who works, who earns, who cares, who counts. Part One introduced Amina, the produce trader who paid three times more of her actual income in tax than the electronics dealer with the same turnover. Part Two showed how joint taxation tells women their labour is not worth it, how VAT on cooking fuel and sanitary pads lands on women because they are women.

Now we must ask a different question. What does it mean to be seen by the system? What does it mean to be invisible?

The woman in Owino is not an exception. She is the norm for millions across Africa. She works, she pays, she contributes. But her contributions leave no trace. They build no record. They confer no standing. She is economically active but economically unregistered. She exists but she does not count.

This invisibility has layers.

The ghost in the market

The first layer is the daily levy. Market fees, toilet fees, garbage fees, informal payments to local officials. These are not taxes in the formal sense, but they are real payments extracted from women's pockets. They fund local services—or at least they are supposed to. Sometimes a receipt is given. Often not. A name is never recorded.

The woman who pays these levies for thirty years has nothing to show for it. No record of contribution. No proof of existence. No claim on the services her payments helped fund. She is the invisible payer.

This layer deserves its own examination. The next piece in this series, "The Ghost in the Market," will explore who collects this money, where it goes, and why these payments confer no citizenship.

The pension gap

The second layer is old age. The woman who pays market levies for forty years will retire with nothing. The woman who pays presumptive tax on her small business builds no pension contribution history. Pension systems are designed for formal, continuous, long-term employment. They assume a working life that looks like a man's.

Women's working lives do not fit this mould. They move in and out of formal and informal work. They take time for care. They work multiple jobs, none of which register for pensions. They contribute to the economy every day but build no security for their old age.

Who bears the cost when women cannot retire? Their children do. Their communities do. Their bodies do, working until they collapse. The system extracts from them for a lifetime and then abandons them when they are old.

This layer also deserves its own examination. Part Five, "The Pension Gap," will ask who is included in social protection and who is left behind.

Nothing official

The third layer is proof. The woman with receipts in a plastic bag. The loan officer who demands three years of tax returns. The bank that will not accept her payment history as evidence of anything.

She has the business, the customers, the turnover, the tax receipts. She has everything except what the system requires.

The loan officer does not ask where she keeps her receipts. He asks for collateral. Land is the preferred form. But like most women, she does not own the land she farms or the stall she rents. Her husband's name is on the title. Her brother's name is on the lease. She has the business, the customers, the payments, the history. She has everything except what the bank recognises.

This is the core of economic ghosthood: you are economically active, you contribute, you pay, but you cannot prove any of it. And because you cannot prove it, you cannot access the credit that would let you grow, the programmes that would support you, the systems that would protect you.

Part Six, "Nothing Official," will examine what counts as proof, who decides, and what would change if payment records—however informal—were recognised.

The pace of change

There are programmes that try to work around this invisibility. Peer collateral schemes, where women's group membership replaces land title. These programmes get women from "poorest of the poor" to "poor." They work.

I evaluated one such programme over twenty years. Women reported a trajectory: they got cash to buy mice. The mice multiplied. They sold some and bought chickens. The chickens multiplied. They sold some and bought pigs. The pigs multiplied. They sold some and bought goats.

Twenty years. From mice to goats.

This is progress. It is real. Women who had nothing now have something. But twenty years to go from mice to goats raises a question. Is this the pace of justice?

The women who climbed this ladder did it through each other—peer collateral, group guarantees, mutual accountability. They relied on their shared poverty because the system would not recognise their individual contribution.

What would have happened if the tax they paid had built public services? If their payment history had given them access to credit? If their decades of contribution had earned them a pension? If they had been seen?

Part Seven, "The Pace of Change," will ask what acceleration would require and why women have to rely on each other's poverty while wealth builds wealth.

What changes when you are seen?

In some countries, things are beginning to shift. Digital IDs that record informal payments. Mobile money histories accepted as proof of income. Pension schemes that reach market traders. Participatory budgeting where communities decide how local revenues are spent. VAT removed from sanitary pads. Presumptive tax bands that account for sectoral margins.

These are fragments of a different system. They show what is possible.

What changes when you are seen? Everything.

When your payments are recorded, you have a history. When you have a history, you can access credit. When you can access credit, you can expand. When you can expand, you can hire. When you can hire, others benefit. When your contributions are counted, you have a claim on public services. When you have a claim, you can demand accountability. When you demand accountability, the system must respond.

The woman in Owino with receipts in a plastic bag is not asking for charity. She is asking for recognition. She has paid for fifteen years. She has contributed. She has been part of the economy every single day. She wants the system to see her.

The questions that remain

What does it mean to be an economic citizen? It means being seen. Counted. Recognised. It means your contribution leaves a trace. Your history follows you. Your payments build something you can claim.

The woman in Owino is not an economic citizen. She is an economic ghost. Present, active, contributing. But invisible.

The articles ahead will examine each layer of her invisibility. The levies that extract without recording. The pension systems that exclude her. The proof that is demanded but cannot be produced. The pace of change that leaves her climbing from mice to goats over decades.

And then, after all the diagnosis, one article will ask a different question. What would it look like if it worked? What is the tax system that sees us?

The vision matters. Because without it, critique is just complaint. With it, critique becomes construction.

She keeps her receipts in a plastic bag. Fifteen years of contribution, stuffed under her stall. That bag is the record of a life of work. It should be enough. It is not. The question is whether we will build a system where it is.

The next piece in this series is "The Ghost in the Market: Women and the Burden of Invisible Levies." It examines the daily payments that fund local services but leave no trace of who paid.