We estimate the tax burden on the mobile telecommunication sector in twenty-five African countries. This tax burden encompasses not only standard and special taxes under the control of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) but also fees raised by the national telecommunication Regulatory Agency (RA). Given the lack of financial data at the country level, we build a representative mobile network operator named TELCO, using the GSMA Intelligence database. We compute the Average Effective Tax Rate (AETR) for this firm considering general and special taxes and fees levied only on the telecommunication sector. We develop a web application (https://data.cerdi.uca.fr/telecom/), allowing the reader to replicate our analysis or modify TELCO and tax parameters. The AETR varies significantly across countries, ranging from 33 percent in Ethiopia to 118 percent in Niger. Special taxes and fees represent a large share of the AETR, illustrating some taxation by regulation and a potential tax competition (a race to the top) between the MoF and the RA. We compare TELCO's AETR with that of a representative gold mining plant and a standard company with a similar gross return. The tax burden of the telecommunications sector is higher than that of the mining sector in 15 of the 19 countries for which we have data on the gold mining sector.

我们估计了 25 个非洲国家移动电信部门的税收负担。这种税负不仅包括财政部 (MoF) 控制下的标准税和特殊税，还包括国家电信监管局 (RA) 收取的费用。鉴于缺乏国家层面的财务数据，我们使用 GSMA Intelligence 数据库建立了一个名为 TELCO 的具有代表性的移动网络运营商。我们计算了这家公司的平均有效税率 (AETR)，考虑了仅对电信部门征收的一般和特殊税费。我们开发了一个 Web 应用程序 (https://data.cerdi.uca.fr/telecom/)，允许读者复制我们的分析或修改 TELCO 和税收参数。AETR 因国家/地区而异，从埃塞俄比亚的 33% 到尼日尔的 118%。特殊税费占 AETR 的很大一部分，说明了某些税收的监管以及财政部和 RA 之间潜在的税收竞争（竞争激烈）。我们将 TELCO 的 AETR 与具有相似总回报的代表性金矿厂和标准公司的 AETR 进行比较。在我们拥有黄金开采部门数据的 19 个国家中，有 15 个国家的电信部门的税收负担高于采矿部门的税收负担。