John W. Mpoha

Mr. John W. Mpoha is an Associate in the Africa and Middle East (AME) Department and a Researcher in the Centre for Studies in African Taxation (CSAT) at the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD), Amsterdam, Netherlands. John has editorial responsibility for all tax analytical publications of select countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and is part of the team the organises the annual Africa Tax Symposium (ATS). He is also involved in various tax research studies in Africa such as off shore indirect transfer of assets, tax related illicit financial flows, value added tax with respect to the digital economy, tax incentives and tax treaty analysis. He is also a speaker and international tax trainer on various topics.

Prior to joining IBFD, he was working as a Principal Tax Policy Economist in the Ministry of Finance (Malawi) in the Revenue Policy Division. He has been working with the Ministry of Finance for over 10 years in the area of tax policy analysis, revenue forecasting and estimation, tax legislation reviews, tax treaty negotiations, review of financial models in energy and mining, formulating a medium-term revenue mobilisation strategy. In addition, he was Technical Committee Member for ATAF’s, African Development Bank project on Informal Sector Taxation in Africa, Addis Tax Initiative (ATI) National Contact Point and a Technical Working Group Member and a Technical Committee Member for the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Tax Sub-committee and a Chairperson for the SADC VAT Task Team.

He is also a published author and one of his articles on the ongoing debates under the digital economy taxation, entitled, “Article 12 B UN Model (2021): A simplified solution for developing countries to tax income from the digital economy?” published in the Bulletin for International Taxation, 2022 (Vol.6), May 4, 2022, can be accessed here.

John holds an LLM (International Tax Law) from the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and an MSc Energy Finance (Mineral & Petroleum Taxation, Financial Modelling of Energy Projects) from Dundee University in Scotland, United Kingdom and a Bachelor of Social Science degree (Economics) from the University of Malawi.