Tax, told through data.
Independent data stories, research and visual investigations into how tax systems work.
In this issue
Contents
Stories
Investigations, told in full- The Gospel of Tax!The flagship: a decade inside Uganda's revenue system, FY2015/16 to FY2024/25
- From Statute to ShillingsHow each change to Uganda's tax law was meant to work, and what it brought in
- The Dispatch BookWhat happened to 36 recommendations about Uganda's tax system
- Omusolo: What did you carry?Tax in Uganda from the oldest tales to the phone in your hand, one load carried through every age
- What changed? Read the receiptsWhat the 2025 and 2026 tax amendment Acts did to eight example taxpayers, slip by slip
- Every Stage Has a FarePaying tax as a taxi ride through a 3D Kampala: every stage the law requires, and what it costs each passenger
- The Shortfall That Isn'tUganda's monthly tax, read like weather: a tested forecast for the rest of the year
- The Road to a 20% Tax-to-GDP RatioUganda's 20% tax-to-GDP target, surveyed: which 20%, how steep, with and without oil
- What Counts as Gainful Activity?Uganda's economy as twenty ribbons of light through eight sheets, from work done to tax collected
- Letters to the Committee28 asks to Parliament's Finance Committee, followed from the letter to the report to the Act
- Does Tax Technology Pay for Itself?EFRIS and Digital Tax Stamps as a working file: every figure ticked, every missing figure left blank
- Are women more tax compliant than men?Uganda's tax administration data, stage by stage
- The Tax MonthUganda's tax data, explained every month
- All storiesEvery story and format in one list
Data
Explore, download and cite the numbers- The Tax Data ObservatoryUganda's public tax dataset behind every story
- Explore indicatorsSearch and chart any Uganda indicator
- Data sheetsThe URA data books, sheet by sheet
- Cite the dataReady-made citations for the Observatory
- The Uganda Tax Amendment RegisterEvery change to the tax law, searchable, with CSV and Stata exports
- African Tax ObservatoryAn atlas of tax for every ATAF member, 2010 to 2025
- The TaxscapeAfrica raised by the tax it collects, a scroll story
- Country sheetsEvery member's figures, printable as a brief
- Compare countriesUp to five members, any measure, any years
- Atlas downloadsEvery number as CSV, with the series breaks
Tools
Interactive models you can run- Tax LabEvery model, each marked by the kind of data it runs on
- A Hundred Pay PacketsChange a rate or a threshold in income tax and see whose pay packet changes; the World Bank's UGX 149 bn rebuilt
- Tax CRMPA company's tax compliance risk management plan, built from the statutes
- The Amendment LabCost a proposed change before it passes, against the record
- Stamp to ArrivalChecking excise-relieved exports across borders, live
- Excise and illicit flowsA paper model of excise and illicit financial flows
- The Border LedgerUganda's trade with its largest partners, every year from FY2014/15, on a globe and in an explorer
Learn
Explainers, methods and notes- Tax ExplainedTax concepts in four parts, with the statutes
- The CasebookReal tax problems and how they were solved, from professionals and the public record
- Take the benchA courtroom from the judge's seat: hear both sides of 14 real tax disputes, stamp your ruling, then see what was held
- The tally sticksWhere tax disputes arise and how long they take, cut as Exchequer tallies
- The cause listEvery tax ruling in the Casebook, newest first
- What should changeThe fixes the decided cases point to
- Contribute a caseShare a problem you solved, anonymised and checked before it is published
- MethodologyHow each figure is made
- Register methods and sourcesEvidence classes, the source register and the research gaps
- ResearchIn-depth investigations, each stating its scope, data and limits
About
Who, how, and the terms- AboutWhat TaxIntellilytics Stories is
- How we workSources, calculations and corrections, in public
- Kaijamahe Walter HillaryPortfolio of the author
- Data requestsBulk data or a feed: write to walterhillarykaijamahe@gmail.com
- PrivacyNo cookies, no tracking; what the servers log
- Terms of useIndependence, sources, reuse and limits
- AccessibilityThe standard the site meets, and how to report a barrier
Featured story
The Gospel of Tax!
Uganda's Tax Universe, FY2015/16 to FY2024/25
An interactive data-journalism investigation into a decade inside Uganda's revenue system, built entirely on URA's own published data, from the border to the payroll, told through a scrolling narrative, 3D scenes and a full evidence trail.
Enter the story →At a glance
Recurring publication
The Tax Month
Uganda's tax data, explained every month.
October 2026
Can Uganda tax what it can't see?
UN member states are negotiating proposed rules for taxing cross-border services. Uganda already has a domestic answer for some of those payments. What would it take to see the rest?
Read the issue →Standalone story · Gender and tax
Are women more tax compliant than men?
How would we know? A stage-by-stage look at Uganda's tax administration data, built on research by Jalia Kangave, Ronald Waiswa and Nathan Sebaggala (ICTD African Tax Administration Paper 23).
Read the story →- 30% of individuals on the register are women.
- 24.4% of women filed a return at least once, against 14.2% of men (FY2013/14 to FY2017/18).
- The paper's data stops at the liability and assessment steps; the story says so.
Standalone story · Fiscal Intelligence and Reform Lab
The Road to a 20% Tax-to-GDP Ratio
Uganda's target of tax at 20% of GDP by FY2029/30, drawn as a road survey: which 20%, how steep the climb is against the record, what the government's own plans and measures add, and what changes once oil flows.
Survey the road →- Shs 13,880 of every Shs 100,000 the economy produces is collected as tax today; the target is Shs 20,000.
- 20% needs +1.22 points a year; the past decade managed +0.30.
- The plans themselves project 17.0% to 17.8% for tax. 20% is reached only if every generous assumption is stacked and oil revenue is counted as tax.
Research · Fiscal Intelligence and Reform Lab
The Dispatch Book
What happened to the recommendations made about Uganda's tax system? Each one traced like a file through a government office: a stamp for every dated document, an empty box where there is none.
Open the book →- 36 recommendations from 8 authors: the World Bank, the IMF, researchers and the government's own strategy.
- 30 of them (83%) show no public evidence of any action.
- 6 became law, 2 of them before they were recommended; none is yet shown to have worked.
Research · Fiscal Intelligence and Reform Lab
The Shortfall That Isn't
Uganda's tax has seasons; its monthly targets don't. A revenue weather station reads the monthly figures, forecasts the rest of the year with a tested range, and says which shortfalls are the season and which deserve a second look.
Read the station →- FY2026/27: 3 of 3 months so far inside the range forecast in July.
- On average June brings 12.3% of a year's tax, the most of any month: the law puts provisional corporate tax in December and June.
- A forecast you can check: every month scored against what came in, 132 months tested without hindsight.
Interactive ride · Fiscal Intelligence and Reform Lab
Every Stage Has a Fare
Paying tax in Uganda as a taxi ride through a 3D Kampala, from the Old Taxi Park to URA House. Choose who is riding: every stage the law requires, the 30% toll before an objection is heard, and what complying costs them.
Take the ride →- 21 stages on three routes; 18 required by a section we have read and quote.
- The median firm spends UGX 3m a year complying, about 2% of turnover; the smallest, over 20%.
- A nil return still costs a median UGX 2.76m a year to file.
Interactive history · From the oldest tales to now
Omusolo: What did you carry?
Before tax was a number it was something you made, caught or dug. One load carried through every age: a hoe, salt, a tusk, a cowry that opens into a holed cent, a banknote losing its ink, a till roll and a phone.
Carry it →- Two tales: a cold comb in Buganda, and an ant hill in Acholi.
- In 1980 the state collected less per person, in days of work, than in 1906.
- Every claim labelled by how far it goes, from folk tale to official record.
Interactive registry · The Casebook
The Registry
Forty-seven decided Ugandan tax disputes on a wall of pigeonholes: a file's thickness is the sum at stake, its tape who the ruling went for. Pull one down and untie it, refile the wall, or rule on fourteen of them yourself.
Walk the wall →- 47 rulings of the Tax Appeals Tribunal and the courts, each with its sources.
- 14 disputes to decide yourself, both sides stated, then the ruling.
- A selected collection, not a win rate: 30 come from the Revenue Authority's own digest.
Explore the data
The Tax Data Observatory
The public dataset behind every story: explorable, downloadable and citable.
Open the Observatory →- 14 datasets
- 1,234 indicators
- 10,271 observations
Beyond Uganda
African Tax Observatory
Uganda inside the continent: an atlas of tax for every ATAF member, with a sheet for each country, the Taxscape scroll story, and a wire that checks the Databank every six hours.
Open the atlas →- 44 tax administrations, 2010 to 2025, from the ATAF Databank.
- The median member collected 14.3% of GDP in tax in 2024.
- Uganda: 12.6%, 26 of 38.
- Country sheets that print as briefs, a comparison tool, the Taxscape scroll story, citations for Edition 1 and every number as CSV.
- 18 prototypes catalogued, each marked by whether its data is real or synthetic.
- 18 already run as interactive pages: budget credibility, fiscal stress test, Pillar Two GloBE, presumptive tax, tax expenditure.
- Nothing in the lab is presented as a finding about Uganda.
- The Border Ledger: Uganda's non-fuel imports and exports with its largest partners, FY2014/15 to FY2024/25, on a globe and in an explorer.
- Uganda bought UGX 65.0 trillion of non-fuel goods from its 50 largest suppliers in FY2024/25 and sold UGX 35.9 trillion to its 50 largest buyers: 1.8 shillings in for every shilling out.
- District by district: URA's registration counts on the real boundaries; district revenue is not shown until a verified dataset exists.
- 2 explainers published so far, each in the same four parts: legal definition, plain language, example and interpretation.
- Withholding tax on cross-border payments
- Source vs. residence taxation
- Each explainer closes with the exact statutory citations it rests on.
Trust
How we work
Every figure traces back to a named source and a reproducible calculation. We correct the record in public when we get something wrong.
Read the full policy →- We keep what the data shows, what we calculate from it, and our own interpretation apart.
- Every story names its sources and publishes its calculations.