Corruption and tax compliance: evidence from small retailers in Bamako, Mali

We investigate the impact of corruption on tax compliance using a sample of 700 small business in Bamako, Mali. The main contribution of this paper is to focus on micro-enterprises (including semi-formal and informal ones), while existing works concentrate on large and formal firms. Our results show that (i) even very small firms pay taxes (two-thirds of firms pay taxes in our sample); and, (ii) paying bribes reduces significantly tax compliance. This latter finding is robust (i) to the addition of a set of control variables accounting for other determinants, (ii) to treatment for endogeneity, and (iii) the use of a different proxy for tax compliance.