This chapter analyses the efforts by Benin and other sub-Saharan African countries to raise tax revenue, in regard to structural characteristics, and explores possible determinants of, and the scope for, greater domestic revenue mobilisation and for tax policy and administration reforms. First, the tax effort in Benin remained relatively stable in 1980–2015, but Benin performed poorer (14th) compared to its neighbour Togo (5th). Second, there is evidence of a positive effect of government transparency and accountability, ‘control of corruption’, and political stability on tax effort. On the contrary, foreign aid is associated with low tax effort. Third, several strategies are investigated to reduce the tax gaps in Benin. If the tax policy seems relatively constrained by reference to the West Africa Economic and Monetary Unions Tax Directives, the Togolese experiment of switching to a semi-autonomous revenue authority may provide guidance to find some room to improve domestic revenue mobilisation. In particular, Benin should review the management of human resources in the tax and customs administrations, and the scope of derogatory regimes that generate tax expenditures.

This chapter identifies the book’s two basic aims: (1) explaining what policy makers and scholars interested in building tax capacity in developing countries may learn from the Chinese experience; and (2) articulating a framework for understanding the politics of taxation in China. It then explains how the unique approach of the book, which focuses on ground-level tax administration, serves these two aims. In relation to the first aim, the book will argue that contrary to assumptions in the current literature, there are fundamentally different types of state capacity in taxation, which follow potentially irreconcilable choices in the face of difficult trade-offs. In relation to the second aim, the book uses the structure of tax administration to illustrate the heterogeneity of political incentives within the Chinese state, critical information bottlenecks, and the political motives behind invocations of law. Unifying the pursuit of these two aims is a reflective conception of law as a special form of securing social order, which sees legal ordering as fundamentally different from social ordering based on state coercion. A summary of the ensuing chapters follows.