The Ghost in the Market

This series examines tax justice through a feminist lens. Previous pieces asked who holds power over tax systems, how gender assumptions are baked into fiscal policy, and what it means to be an economic ghost—visible in your daily contributions, invisible in official records.

Part Three introduced three layers of invisibility: the daily levies that extract without recording, the pension systems that exclude informal workers, and the problem of proving income without official documentation. This article unpacks the first layer.

Women pay market dues, toilet fees, garbage fees, and informal levies every day. These payments fund local services—or are supposed to. But they leave no trace. No receipt with a name. No record of contribution. No recognition of citizenship.

This is not an accident of administration. It is a design feature. The women who keep markets running, who pay for sanitation they may never receive, who fund local economies with their daily coins—they remain invisible to the tax system that extracts from them.

We start where the pattern is sharpest: with the women whose daily contributions leave no trace.

The coins that disappear

The market opens at dawn. Before she can lay out her tomatoes, her greens, her second-hand clothes, she pays. A coin to the man at the gate. A few notes at the market office. A fee for her stall, a fee for garbage collection, a fee for the toilet she will use later. By the time she starts selling, she has already paid five times.

She will pay again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. For thirty years, she will pay.

Sometimes she gets a receipt. A small slip of paper with an amount, a date, a stamp that could belong to anyone. No name. No identifier. No record that she, this specific woman, paid this specific amount on this specific day.

Often she gets nothing. Just a nod, a wave, a hand that takes her money and disappears into a pocket. The transaction is complete. The evidence is absent.

She does not ask for more. Everyone pays. This is how it works.

But thirty years of payments, and what does she have to show? A plastic bag of anonymous receipts that could belong to anyone. A memory of coins dropped into countless hands. No record that proves she existed, that she paid, that she contributed.

The money left her pocket. It entered the system. And she left no trace.

Who collects, Who keeps, Who knows?

Ask a simple question: where does this money go?

The answers are rarely clear. Market fees go to the market authority, which answers to the city council, which reports to the central government. Garbage fees go to a private contractor, or a local cooperative, or an official who hires casual labourers. Toilet fees go to an attendant who pays a licence, or does not. "Development fees" go to the local chairman, who says they go to community projects.

No one really knows.

The woman paying does not know. The man collecting may not know either. He collects his quota, remits what is required, keeps the rest. This is how systems without accountability work. Leakage is built in.

In some places, the opacity is deliberate. Informal payments allow officials to supplement salaries, fund political machines, or simply enrich themselves. The woman's coin becomes part of an invisible economy within the visible one. It fuels the system that extracts from her.

In other places, the opacity is neglect. No one designed a system to record these payments because no one thought they mattered. The payers were never meant to be counted. They were only meant to pay.

Either way, the result is the same. The woman funds local services—or funds whatever the money actually funds—but she cannot prove it. She cannot point to her payments and say: I contributed to this market, this sanitation, this community. I am a stakeholder here.

Her stake is invisible. Her voice carries no weight.

The receipt that carries no name

Imagine a different receipt. One that says: "Market fee received from Pinky Santa. Amount: 2,000 shillings. Date: 3 March 2026. Stall number: 147. Issued by Kampala City Authority."

Aisha keeps this receipt. Next month, she gets another. Next year, she has twelve. After ten years, she has one hundred and twenty.

Each receipt is a data point. Together, they tell a story. Pinky Santa paid market fees regularly for ten years. She had a stall. She traded. She contributed.

This story could prove her income to a loan officer. It could build her pension contribution history. It could establish her as an economic actor with rights and claims.

But Pinky does not get that receipt. She gets a slip of paper that says "Market fee received." No name. No identifier. No data.

Her ten years of payments are invisible. She is invisible.

The formal taxpayer gets a receipt with a name, a number, a record. That record follows them through life. It proves they exist to the bank, to the pension system, to the state. The woman in the market gets nothing. Her payments are collected, spent, and forgotten. She is a source of revenue but not a subject of recognition.

This is not a small difference. It is the difference between being a taxpayer and being a source of extraction. Between being a citizen and being a ghost.

The number that grants existence

Every formal taxpayer has one. A Tax Identification Number (TIN). A string of digits that follows you through life. It is mandatory for filing taxes—PAYE, VAT, income tax. You need it to open some bank accounts. You definitely need it to secure a bank loan. You need it to obtain a business licence, to process government transactions. If you register a motor vehicle or transfer land, you must have one. No TIN, by default, excludes you from these transactions.

This is the theory.

The reality is different.

Most small business owners do not have a TIN. Among those who do, possession is uneven—slightly more women than men, but both below forty percent. The reasons are not mystery. Registration takes time. The forms are confusing. The offices are far. And for what?

The primary uses of a TIN, for those who have one, are procedural. Obtaining a trade licence. Securing a bank loan—though most small business owners do not borrow from banks. These are transactions the system requires, not transactions that transform a business.

What TINs are almost never used for: claiming tax benefits or refunds. The number that is supposed to unlock economic citizenship does nothing of the sort. It is a key that opens no doors the woman in the market needs to enter.

She has the number on a piece of paper. It sits in the same plastic bag as her receipts. When she needs to renew her licence, she produces it. When she needs to prove her existence for anything that actually matters—a loan from her savings group, recognition from the pension system, a voice in how market fees are spent—the TIN is silent.

The number gives her a name on a form. It does not give her a claim on the services her taxes fund. It does not make her visible to the systems that shape her life. It is compliance without return. Recognition without benefit.

This is not a failure of the TIN alone. It is a failure of the entire architecture that assumes formal inclusion is the same as meaningful access. The woman with a TIN and a plastic bag of receipts is still an economic ghost. The number has not made her visible. It has only given the system another way to track her payments without ever acknowledging her existence.

What would change if it did? If having a TIN meant your payment history built a credit score you could use with the savings group, not just the bank? If it meant your market fees counted toward a pension you could actually access? If it meant you could see, in real time, what your taxes built?

The technology exists. The will is the question.

What would change if you were named?

Some places are experimenting. Digital IDs in Kenya. Bank accounts for the unbanked in India. SMS receipts in Ugandan markets. These are fragments. They create records where none existed. They give women a number, a history, a trace.

But a number is not a claim. A history is not a pension. A receipt is not a road. The woman with a digital ID still asks: where does my money go? The woman with a bank account still wonders: why will no one lend to me? The woman with an SMS receipt still faces old age with nothing.

The fragments show what is technically possible. They do not show what is politically willed. The question is not whether we can record her payments. It is whether we will let those records change anything.

What would change if having a name meant your payment history built a credit score you could use with the savings group, not just the bank? If it meant your market fees counted toward a pension you could actually access? If it meant you could see, in real time, what your taxes built? If it meant the road outside your market was paved because the system could see how many of you paid, for how long, and could no longer ignore you?

The technology exists. The will is the question.

The ghost in the market

She pays at the gate. She pays at the stall. She pays for garbage, for the toilet, for the man who says he will watch her goods while she runs an errand. She pays every day. She has paid for fifteen years.

Her receipts fill a plastic bag. Anonymous slips, undated stamps, coins that left no trace. When she needs a loan, the bank asks for proof of income. She has receipts in a plastic bag. The loan is denied.

When she thinks about old age, she wonders what will support her. Pension systems do not see her. She has paid for fifteen years, but no record shows it. She will retire on nothing.

When she asks where her money goes, no one can tell her. The market office says it goes to the city. The city says it goes to services. The services are invisible too.

She is the ghost in the market. The question is whether we will keep the lights off, or finally turn them on.

Her invisibility is not one thing. It is layered. This is the first layer.

The woman who pays market fees for thirty years will retire with nothing. Pension systems do not see her either. That is the next layer. Part Five examines who is included in social protection—and who is left behind.