Tax design and rent sharing in mining sector: Evidence from African gold-producing countries

Based on the innovative database, we use a discounted cash flow model to study the rent sharing and the mining tax design in African gold-producing countries. Two main tax designs emerge: those that favour production-based taxes in order to secure government's revenues and those that favour profit-based taxes to support economic efficiency. From the estimation of a panel model regression, we show that tax design depends essentially on the evolution of world prices and not on institutional variables. The recent ‘innovations’ in mining taxation to introduce more progressivity have had mitigated results. In the best of cases, the regressivity of tax regimes has been reduced.