ATAF 2nd Africa-Wide Tax Essay Competition 2019

The African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF) 2nd Africa-Wide Tax Essay Competition is now on and applications are being accepted from African researchers, tax officials, academics and tax practitioners for its 2nd Africa-Wide Tax Essay Competition.

The deadline for submission of applications is 3rd November, 2019.

The African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF) is pleased to announce the 2nd Africa wide Tax Essay Competition (ATEC) for 2019. The essay competition is designed to encourage young African researchers, academics and tax officials to identify problems or challenges faced by African tax administrations and propose innovative solutions.

Theme

The ATAF 2nd Africa-wide Tax Essay Competition (ATEC) gives you the opportunity to bring forward your feasible and readily implementable solutions on how African tax administrations can innovatively tax the digitalized economy. Essays should address issues regarding creative ideas that can lead to ground-breaking solutions to the tax challenges posed by digitalization. For this year’s competition, participants are required to write on the following topic: African perspectives on the tax challenges from the digitalization of the economy.

In January 2019, ATAF’s Cross Border Taxation Committee (CBT) critically discussed various proposals and measures on the tax challenges from the digitalization of the economy. The ensuing ATAF Technical Notes called for fundamental changes to the international tax rules mainly because digitalization has further led to limited or no physical presence in most African jurisdictions thereby depriving them of their taxing rights. Furthermore, the prevailing profit allocation rules do not sufficiently reflect the value created for Multinational companies by the brand perception in the minds of the customers in the market jurisdiction. ATAF emphasizes that changes to these nexus and profit allocation rules should apply more broadly than to just the highly digitalized businesses (see ATAF’s related technical notes on the ATAF website).  

Eligibility

The ATAF 2nd ATEC 2019 is open to all African researchers, tax officials, academics and tax practitioners aged 40 or less. Women are strongly encouraged to participate.

Prizes and Awards

The prizes of the ATAF 2nd Africa-wide Tax Essay Competition 2019 will be as follows:

• First Prize: 1500 USD, a Trophy and an award certificate. The winner will be invited to ATAF’s 10 years Anniversary to be held in Kampala, Uganda from 18 to 22 November 2019 for a special award ceremony with flight and accommodation expenses covered. At the commemoration, the winner will be required to make a presentation of the essay at the presence of all heads of tax administrations in Africa.
• Second Prize: USD 1000, a Trophy and an award certificate.
• Third Prize: USD 750, a Trophy and an award certificate.
• The best 10 essays (including the three winners) will be published in the book of ATAF’s Compilations of Abstracts on Tax Systems in Africa. 
• All other participants will receive an ATEC 2019 participation certificate.

How to Submit Entries

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

1. The essay must be theme-based and should not have been published elsewhere at the time of submission.
2. The essay must originally be written by the entrant as its sole creator/author. 
3. Plagiarized essays will automatically be disqualified
4. ATAF employees or any official involved in the development, production, implementation, administration, judging or fulfillment of the competition are not eligible to enter.
5. ATAF will reserve the right to publish and disseminate awarded essays.
6. ATAF will not be responsible for any breach of copyright or confidentiality by any author.
7. Winners of the competition will NOT be entitled to represent ATAF in any manner except mention this award in their CV.
8. If an author accepts an offer of publication from somewhere else before being notified about the results of this competition, ATAF must be informed immediately.
9. ATAF will have the final authority to relax any of the criteria in the larger interests of the profession and research.
10. The decision of the Judges on the selection of essays shall be final.
11. Selection of an essay by ATAF will not mean that ATAF endorses or subscribes to the views expressed by the author.
12. The essay submissions shall be evaluated on a first-come, first-served basis
13. The essay will be deemed ineligible if it violates any of the above conditions

Essay Format Requirements

The essay must conform to the following standard structure or outline:

• Introduction, Problem Statement, Methodology, Key findings, Implications of findings, Key implementable recommendations

The following specifications must be followed:

1. The length of the essay should NOT exceed 1000 words (two pages).
2. The standard format of the essay should be Arial, Font 12, a 1-inch margin on all sides and 1.0 line spacing.  
3. Any uniform mode of citation can be followed for footnotes with Arial, Font 10 and 1 line spacing.
4. Must be submitted as a Microsoft Word file ONLY.
5. A passport-sized photo of utmost 5 MB must be submitted alongside the essay
6. The Essay must be written in English
7. Please NOTE that submissions must include two (02) documents:
   i. The title page should include article’s title, full name, institution, type of institution, job position, mobile number, alternative phone number, country of residence, nationality, country of origin, primary language, secondary language, postal address and email address.
   ii. Anonymised main essay indicating figures, tables (if any) with numbering, title, source and references

Essays that fail to follow these requirements will be automatically disqualified.

EVALUATION: The ATEC 2019 essays will be evaluated based on the following criteria: (1) depth of research; (2) originality and creativity of thought; (3) quality, clarity, and efficiency of presentation; and (4) relevance to African tax administrations (5) practicality of the recommendations. The ATAF reserves the right to award fewer or lesser prizes (or no prizes at all) if the judges determine that all submissions (or insufficient submissions) do not merit selection.

NOTIFICATION: Entrants will be notified that their Essays have been received within 2 days of submission and will be notified of competition results by 8 November 2019.

Please NOTE that no Essay submission will be accepted via e-mail. All Submissions must be made via the following link: https://atrn.ataftax.org/essay

Please do not include any identifying information in the Main Essay as specified above.

For any further queries, please contact:
Mr Frank Kalizinje at e-mail: fkalizinje@ataftax.org or alternatively at +27 12 451 8810
Dr Nara Monkam at e-mail: nmonkam@ataftax.org