A RECENT analysis in one of our feature pages explored how many African counties, their networks of tax expertise and budget planning specifically, are working around the clock to try and adopt methods of taxing ‘high networth individuals’ chiefly to cover for the shortfall in development assistance flows.

A RECENT analysis in one of our feature pages explored how many African counties, their networks of tax expertise and budget planning specifically, are working around the clock to try and adopt methods of taxing ‘high networth individuals’ chiefly to cover for the shortfall in development assistance flows.

Not everyone in the non-governmental organisations field subscribes to such thinking and, similarly, neither does everyone in the global charity industry. No wonder that a recent CEOs roundtable forum held in next-door Rwanda appealed to African CEOs to map out modalities of helping to fill the gap – the approach being voluntary.

Those pushing for adoption of targeted taxation and by how much will likely forget that they are in a market economy, which can only be stable and enable numerous individuals to put money into economic activities expecting meaningful gain for their investment and effort.

When this sense of security is eroded, with arbitrary taxes raised against those confirmed or even merely perceived as super rich, the net impact is to reduce investor confidence.

That way, money presumably starts to flow out of economy to be retained in banks as savings and deposits, or eventually remitted outside the country.

Such a situation would likely thin out the cash banks have for lending to individuals and soon place central bank operations on the wrong foot as people purchase foreign exchange to hoard and even to take cash outside.

There is a rule in tax administration or tax policy planning that a good tax is one that is easy to administer and stimulates economic activity rather than impeding it.

Trouble with a good number of NGOs housing scores of activists is that they are not animated by how to propel economic activity but often how to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.

They adopt such mindset and try to impose it on governments on account of the fact that they are not tasked with governing but to appease or appeal to sentiments of ‘have-nots’.

Yet it is hard to find any academic or NGO activists who wish they were poorer because their siblings were poor.

This wish to tax the rich isn’t far removed from the more responsible position articulated by the likes of Bill Gates, given the fact that there is no limit to what one can provide when it is a matter of volunteering – not to budgets definitely but to a defined causes.

An example could be a fund for assisting orphanages operated by private hands. Schools are also at times assisted by their own merely out of fondness of memories and proximity with respective generations of residents.

Public facilities would meanwhile likely be dotted with names of benefactors and consequently receive funds – that is, charity cash – for the purpose. Naming facilities after individuals is a common way of mixing public-private partnerships with charity.