Reforms aimed at simplification have also reduced unnecessary regulations and reduced the (sometimes large) number of taxes businesses must pay (especially small businesses). In most cases, national governments now collect a relatively small number of taxes – income taxes, the VAT and customs duties, most notably – that offer comparatively limited discretion to tax collectors, and for which payments can be made in a variety of ways. While there is still much to be done, costs of compliance have decreased, while the scope for day-to-day corruption and collusion has similarly declined. The global average for time required for companies to comply with their tax obligations has fallen from 324 hours in 2006 to 205 hours in 2019, while the average number of required payments dropped from 34 to 24. However, significant regional differences remain.<sup>70</sup> While these facilitation reforms have enjoyed significant success, their impact on actual compliance rates is less clear. At some level, there is no doubt that facilitation reforms have led to concrete gains in tax receipts: tomes of psychological research make clear that reducing costs virtually guarantees increased compliance. In addition, there is some evidence that, for example, the introduction of “one-stop-shops” for (small) business registration has aided formalization and compliance.<sup>71</sup> Yet there have been few systematic efforts to study the magnitude of these effects, especially in developing countries. Additional evidence could have substantial value in helping tax agencies to allocate resources, and in confronting institutional inertia – or vested interests – slowing the implementation of useful reforms.

Another concern is that while facilitation reforms – and simplification efforts in particular – have advanced significantly at the national level, benefits have not always extended to the sub-national level. Many sub-national governments, typically lacking access to the most productive tax bases, have continued to employ tax systems that include large numbers of distorting, unnecessary and overlapping taxes, and offer substantial discretion to tax collectors engaging in face-to-face interactions with taxpayers. While this has been a means for local governments lacking adequate revenue sources to maximize receipts, it has sometimes been accompanied by enormous complexity, horizontal inequities and opportunities for abuse and informal arrangements. The Democratic Republic of Congo presents a particularly extreme case: while the national tax system resembles those of Western countries, local governments officially have more than 400 types of taxes, levies and fees. Unsurprisingly, recent evidence suggests that this has contributed to high levels of extraction from taxpayers, with very little of that revenue reaching the government budget, and low levels of trust in government.<sup>72</sup> While facilitation reforms initially adopted a technical focus on reducing the costs of compliance, they have evolved to include an interest in building taxpayer trust. Efforts to expand transparency, promote taxpayer education and create new points of engagement between taxpayers and officials are in part designed to increase understanding of tax obligations, and thus ease compliance. But they also reflect a belief that if taxpayers have a clearer understanding of what they need to pay,

> 70 World Bank. (2019). _Doing business 2019: Training for reform._ Washington, DC: The World Bank.

> 71 Devas, N., & Kelly, R. (2001). Regulations or revenues? An analysis of local business licenses, with a case study of the single business permit reform in Kenya." _Public Administration and Development_ , 21:381-391.

> 72 Paler, L., Prichard, W., Sanchez de la Sierra, R., & Samii, C. (2017). Survey on total tax burden in the DRC, Final Report. Kinshasa: Department for International Development.

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