★ The tax system 2013–2024 · OECD/ATAF from LRA returns 16 West African economies
How the tax system is built, and how it compares
Liberia collects more money than it ever has and a smaller share of its economy than it did in 2013. Both are true, and the gap between them is the whole story.
The other pages read a single budget year against the document that printed it. This one steps back: twelve years by kind of tax, the cost of the exemptions written against them, and Liberia measured against its neighbours. Different sources and different definitions, so the basis is named on every card and the measures are never averaged.
Where the tax comes from, 2013–2024
OECD/ATAF FROM LRA RETURNS · CENTRAL GOVERNMENTColumns are dollars collected; the line is tax as a share of GDP, on the right-hand axis. They move in opposite directions — the economy outgrew the revenue administration — and that divergence is the single most important fact about Liberian public finance. It cannot be seen in any one budget year.
Calendar years, central government, as published by the OECD; Liberia budgeted July–June until 2021, so the earlier years follow the OECD's fiscal-to-calendar convention rather than the periods Liberia legislated — which is why this series has no break in it and the LRA's own does. How the fiscal-year change is handled → Non-tax revenue includes royalties, social development contributions, fees and fines; grants are excluded. The ratio is general government, the basis on which every country in the comparison below is measured.
The fifteen largest lines, and their twelve-year shape
Lines that name a sector, US$M
Royalties, social development contributions and sector-specific income taxes — the payments only that sector makes. Each panel carries its own scale, so the shapes are comparable and the levels are not; the figure at the end of each line is 2024. Mining is the only sector whose payments are large enough to see against the others; the maritime registry's receipts sit under other property income in most years and are understated here. D17 →
The LRA's own long series, across the calendar change
LRA ANNUAL REPORT FY2023 · TABLE 6 · P.36The OECD series above is compiled on calendar years. The LRA's own Domestic Tax Department table runs on the fiscal years Liberia actually budgeted in — four July–June years, then the calendar years after 2021 — which is why the two cannot be laid end to end. Shown as the LRA prints it, with the break marked.
Domestic Tax Department collections only: this excludes customs, which the LRA reports separately, so the totals here are well below domestic revenue.
What the incentives cost
LRA TAX EXPENDITURE REPORT 2023–24Tax expenditure is revenue the law says is owed and the state chooses not to collect — exemptions, incentive certificates, concession terms and executive orders. The LRA has published its own estimate since 2018. It is the largest single number in Liberian public finance that almost never appears in a budget document.
Revenue forgone, 2018–2024
US$M by tax type. Caps show the total and its share of the tax actually collected that year.
In 2023 the exemptions were worth — of the tax the state did collect, and of GDP. In 2024 they fell to , of collections. For comparison, the entire FY2025 health sector appropriation was .
Why the revenue was forgone, 2024
GST and import duty only — the two taxes the report breaks down by reason. Business income tax expenditure of is reported as a single line.
Investment incentive certificates
of the 2024 total went through investment incentive certificates — the instrument the National Investment Commission promotes to investors. Of that, went to beneficiaries the LRA could not find in the Ministry of Finance's incentive registry. The register of who holds a certificate is not published anywhere.
Liberia among its neighbours
2023 · % OF GDP · GENERAL GOVERNMENTLeft, tax revenue as a share of GDP — the one series that measures every country the same way. Right, the same economies carried across to the IMF's wider measure, revenue excluding grants: each line's length is that country's non-tax revenue. The LRA quotes the second figure, the OECD publishes the first, and both are correct.
Liberia highlighted throughout. Within the Mano River Union it leads on tax: Guinea is level at , Sierra Leone collects , Côte d'Ivoire is the outlier at . On the IMF's measure Liberia is expected to reach in 2025, against for Sub-Saharan Africa. The ECOWAS aggregate is GDP-weighted and is therefore mostly Nigeria's number, not a regional average.
Investment, and the number nobody sources
BALANCE OF PAYMENTS · 16 ECONOMIESForeign direct investment as recorded on the balance of payments, the series the Central Bank reports and the World Bank redistributes — the only measure of Liberian investment inflow that is compiled the same way as its neighbours'.
Net FDI inflow, 2024, as a share of GDP. Liberia highlighted.
Two figures for the same year
The National Investment Commission's website states its figure for 2024 and names no source; no NIC publication carries it, and the commission's own "Investment Dashboard" link returns a 404. D16 →
The NIC is cited as an institution, not as a source. The investment-climate literature describes what the commission does and takes its numbers from the balance of payments instead. The unsourced figure nonetheless circulates: it is repeated by search engines and aggregators as though it were a statistic. Liberia Ledger records both, names which is which, and adds nothing of its own.
Need Liberia set against a specific comparator?
Peer-group benchmarking, incentive-cost estimates and revenue-potential work are commissioned from the same database, with the same citations.