South Africa corporate tax gap study: A bottom-up approach based on audit assessments

Chloé van Biljon, Amina Ebrahim, Zoleka Jaxa, Tumelo Mohale and Nadine Riedel

No wp-2026-101, WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER)

Abstract: While anecdotal evidence suggests widespread corporate tax evasion, systematic empirical data remain scarce. In this paper, we estimate the corporate income tax gap, the discrepancy between reported liabilities and true underlying tax obligations, for the entire population of small, medium, and large incorporated businesses in South Africa. Our analysis employs a bottom-up approach, leveraging a rich dataset of tax returns and the universe of taxpayer audits to quantify detectable non-compliance.

Keywords: Corporate income tax; Tax gap; Machine learning; Bottom-up approach; Audits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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