The continent of Africa is one of the richest on the planet. However, owing to a number of factors and circumstances, the continent is now synonymous with all that is negative. Talk of civil wars, abject poverty, squalor, diseases, famine, drought, ethnic clashes and others, Africa is never far from mind.
The main problem that African countries have right from the day that they got political independence has been bad leadership. The continent is a pit of brutal dictators and megalomaniacs who steal their countries blind. Nepotism, nauseating corruption and kleptocracy have been entrenched in various African nations. Very little can be done without greasing palms here and there.
The most unfortunate part is that the impoverished citizens are still taxed beyond reason. In a nation where you know that the government officials are busy embezzling the taxes with vain promises of a better life, the African taxpayer is one of the most disenchanted in the world. The reasoning is that why pay taxes when you will not derive any benefit?
To complicate the issues, the rich and wealthy in African society are notorious for tax evasion. This should not come as a surprise especially concerning the fact that quite a number of these millionaires accumulated their ill-gotten wealth from shady deals and do not have the slightest desire to spend a dime in form of taxes. Thus, nobody wants to pay taxes and other services like prepaid card.
However, it is the poor man that ends up bearing the brunt at the end of the day. They are forced to pay taxes for services that are not in existence. What some African governments do is to simply remove the taxes from the salaries and wages of the poor workers. In a place like Nigeria, this is called “deducting from source” while leaving the billionaires and oligarchs untouched. This is the headache of the African taxpayer.