Chasing the Missing Billions: A Literature Study on Tax Revenue and Its Global Challenges

Abstrak

Purpose: This study aims to examine and synthesize the growing body of scholarship on tax revenue mobilization and the multidimensional challenges that constrain it across developed and developing economies. By mapping the determinants, obstacles, and emerging solutions discussed in recent research, the study seeks to clarify why many governments continue to struggle to raise sufficient domestic revenue despite decades of administrative and policy reform.

Method: This research applies a literature study approach, systematically searching, screening, and synthesizing peer-reviewed journal articles indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, and related scholarly databases. A structured search and screening protocol was applied to identify relevant publications from the past decade, resulting in a final set of thirty-one primary studies that were analyzed thematically to extract patterns, gaps, and policy implications.

Findings: The reviewed literature showed that tax revenue performance is shaped by an interacting set of structural, institutional, and behavioral factors, including economic structure, governance quality, corruption, trade openness, and natural resource dependence. Digitalization of tax administration and the growth of artificial intelligence-based compliance tools offer considerable promise for narrowing the tax gap, taxes are undermined by persistent obstacles such as the informal and shadow economy, base erosion and profit shifting, the taxation of the digital and gig economy, cryptocurrency transactions, and fragile tax morale among citizens.

Implications: The findings imply that revenue mobilization strategies cannot rely on technology alone. Sustainable improvement requires parallel investment in institutional capacity, administrative digitalization, taxpayer trust, and coordinated international tax governance, particularly for developing economies that remain exposed to profit shifting and resource-revenue volatility.

Originality: This study contributes originality by consolidating a wide and fragmented body of recent literature, spanning classical determinants of tax effort, current digital tax administration research, and emerging challenges from the platform and crypto economy, into a single integrated narrative that highlights both the persistence and the evolution of tax revenue challenges in today's global economy.