Public Channels of Access and State-Citizen Encounters in the Namibian Tax System

Abstract

The ability to access the state as a taxpaying citizen is important for the purposes of building trust and reciprocity, voicing grievances and disseminating knowledge, and strengthening tax compliance and transparency. Based on original empirical data, this paper elaborates a theoretical argument of how state-citizen encounters in the case of taxation are conditioned by five interacting factors. Drawing on interviews with tax officials and taxpayers in Windhoek, Namibia, this paper shows that these five factors are weakly present and negatively reinforce each other, thereby providing insights into the Namibian tax system and everyday state-citizen tax encounters in developing countries.