Albeit the resurgence of traditional authorities in Sub-Saharan Africa has been one of the most investigated and debated topics of the last two decades, scant attention has been devoted to the mechanisms through which these organisations fund their activities. In the effort to fill this gap in the literature, this article brings evidence on such institutional dynamics among the acholi of Northern Uganda. In particular, it argues that many acholi clans are nowadays characterised by the presence of funding mechanisms that constitute forms of taxation that seems to be inspired to both the prerogatives of the old colonial chiefs and the contemporary Ugandan state. On the one side, the essay stresses the ‘covert’ nature of such arrangements, as the national legislation formally recognises traditional authorities but prevents them to levy taxes; on the other side, it shows that the same de facto represent a reinvention of the precolonial tributes to chiefs.