AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF TAX REVENUE AND TOTAL REVENUE OF WEST AFRICAN COUNTRIES

The paper examined tax revenue and total revenue of West African countries for 10 years, spanning from 2008 to 2018. The population covered all the West African countries; out of which, 8 countries were randomly selected. Data of these countries were sourced from the Organization of Economic Co-operation Development (OECD) and Revenue Statistics in Africa and the statistical bulletin of various countries. Data collected for this study were analyzed with the use of descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis and panel data regression which include pooled OLS, fixed effect estimation and random effect estimation. It was discovered that company income tax, value added tax, and custom and excise duties exert a positive impact on total revenue, though the impact is insignificant for value added tax given the reported coefficient and probability values that stood at 5.990342 (p=0.060>0.05), as against the reported coefficient and probability values of company income tax and custom and excise duties that stood at 0.195278 (p=0.000<0.05) and 0.9765433(p=0.021<0.05) respectively. Based on these findings, the study concluded that tax revenue has positive effect on the total revenue of West African Countries. Thus, it was recommended that tax authorities of various countries should properly monitor companies income tax and custom and excise duties to sustain its significance to the revenue pool of the government, efforts should be intensified by the government agencies saddled with the collection and increase in value added tax rate to improve the tax revenue base and, that there should be a persistent review of existing tax laws to keep the act in pace with the economic reality.