Global Tax Expenditures Database (GTED)

The GTED collects all publicly available data on tax expenditures (TEs) published by national governments worldwide from 1990 onwards, covering a total of 218 jurisdictions. Based on a step-by-step search process, 121 jurisdictions are currently classified as <em>Non-reporting Jurisdictions.</em> The remaining 97 ones do provide some type of TE data, which was gathered by the GTED team. Wherever available, the GTED gathers revenue forgone estimates and number of beneficiaries of individual TE provisions. It also gathers metadata including the definition of the TE provision, its legal basis and duration. Each record in the GTED is classified in four main categories: Tax Base, Policy Objective, Beneficiaries and Type of TE used. In some cases, second- or third-level categories have been introduced. For instance, <em>Fuel Tax</em> data is categorised at the third level within <em>Tax Base: Taxes on Good and Services Excise Taxes Fuel Tax</em>. If the information for a record is not available or unclear, the respective category is classified as <em>Not stated/unclear</em>. When governments do not publish provision-level data but rather some kind of aggregated information, the GTED gathers this aggregate data. Likewise, if governments report on specific areas of TE only (such as tax incentives for investments, or TEs on income taxes) the GTED presents data on these areas alone. The terms <em>TE reporting</em> or <em>TE report</em> are used broadly, and refer to a large variety of public documents, ranging from annual, comprehensive reports on TEs that are part of governmental budget documentation to individual documents issued by a public body and providing some aggregate information on some specific TE mechanisms. As a minimum requirement, reports must contain some kind of information on the actual use of TE provisions. For instance, a list of available tax deductions for investments, provided by a governmental investment promotion agency, would not be considered a TE report unless they provide revenue forgone estimates or any other data that would allow users of the GTED to obtain information about the actual use of the respective TEs. The GTED distinguishes <em>regular</em> and <em>irregular</em> reporting. A sequence of reports from 1995 to 2005 would not be considered regular reporting in the GTED, since the country had reported on a yearly basis, but not anymore. Likewise, <em>regular</em> is not necessarily related to annual reporting. Germany, for instance, publishes federal subsidy reports including TE data every two years since 1967. A total of 15 such reports have been issued since 1990, containing data on 29 budget years (until 2018). The GTED counts this as 29 years reported, because data is provided on a year-by-year basis and can be consulted and analysed as such. The data is processed in a consistent format seeking to increase the level of longitudinal and cross-country comparability. Whereas revenue forgone estimates are provided as reported by governments (in local currency units, current prices), the GTED also provides figures converted into US dollars as well as indicators providing the revenue forgone through TE provisions as shares both of <em>GDP</em> and <em>Tax Revenue</em> – to compute these two indicators, data from the UNU-WIDER Government Revenue Dataset is used as input. The share of revenue forgone as a percentage of Tax Revenue is computed using figures of total tax revenue collected by countries’ central governments. The share of revenue forgone as a percentage of Tax Revenue is computed using figures of total tax revenue collected by countries’ central governments. Besides all the effort put into ensuring comparability, cross-country analysis of TE data needs to be done cautiously. The main issue, which is inherent to TE data, regards <em>benchmarking</em>. TEs are defined as departures from – usually country-specific – normal tax structures or benchmarks. On this note, the GTED uses the data published by official governmental institutions, sticking to their own definitions of benchmarks, without trying to complement official figures or challenge what different countries consider as the standard tax system or the benchmark. When it comes to the methodology used by governments to compute the fiscal cost of TE provisions, the vast majority of countries report on TEs based on the <em>revenue forgone approach</em> that estimates the amount by which taxpayers have their tax liabilities reduced as a result of a TE based on their actual current economic behaviour. Since the revenue forgone methodology is static, the potential interconnections between different TE provisions are not taken into account when computing the fiscal cost of TEs based on it. Hence, aggregating revenue forgone estimates of the individual provisions computed separately and without taking behavioural changes into account would not result in a figure that represents the total cost of all TEs. While providing users of the database with the opportunity to draw comparisons across countries or country groups, we want to be clear that any such comparison should be mindful of different levels of reporting, differences in national benchmark systems and methodological shortcomings of revenue forgone estimations. Country Income Groups and Regional Classifications are based on the latest World Bank classifications.全球税收支出数据库（GTED）收集了1990年以来全球各国政府公开发布的全部可获取的税收支出 (tax expenditures) 相关数据，覆盖总计218个管辖区。通过逐步检索流程，目前有121个管辖区被归类为**未申报管辖区 (Non-reporting Jurisdictions)**。剩余97个管辖区均提供了一定类型的税收支出数据，这些数据均由GTED团队收集整理。只要数据可获取，GTED便会收集各项税收支出条款的收入放弃额估算值以及受益主体数量。同时，该数据库还会收集相关元数据，包括税收支出条款的定义、法律依据以及执行期限。GTED中的每条记录均被划分为四大核心类别：**税基 (Tax Base)**、**政策目标 (Policy Objective)**、**受益主体 (Beneficiaries)**以及**税收支出类型 (Type of TE used)**。在部分场景中，还会设置二级或三级分类。例如，**燃油税 (Fuel Tax)**数据被归类至三级分类：**税基 (Tax Base)**：**货物与服务税 (Taxes on Good and Services)** → **消费税 (Excise Taxes)** → **燃油税 (Fuel Tax)**。若某条记录的信息缺失或模糊，则对应的分类将被标记为**未说明/模糊 (Not stated/unclear)**。若政府未发布条款级别的数据，仅提供汇总类信息，GTED也会收集此类汇总数据。同理，若政府仅披露特定领域的税收支出信息（例如投资税收优惠或所得税相关税收支出），GTED也将仅收录该领域的相关数据。**税收支出申报 (TE reporting)**或**税收支出申报文件 (TE report)**的表述被广泛使用，涵盖各类公开文件：既包括作为政府预算文件组成部分的年度税收支出综合报告，也包括公共机构发布的、针对特定税收支出机制提供汇总信息的独立文件。申报文件需满足的最低要求是包含税收支出条款的实际使用相关信息。例如，若某政府投资促进机构仅发布了可适用的投资税收减免清单，而未提供收入放弃额估算值或其他可让GTED用户获取对应税收支出实际使用情况的数据，则该清单不能被视为税收支出申报文件。GTED将申报分为**定期申报 (regular)**与**不定期申报 (irregular)**两类。若某国1995年至2005年曾按年度发布申报文件，但后续未再继续发布，则该时间段的申报序列在GTED中不会被认定为定期申报。同理，定期申报并不等同于年度申报。例如，德国自1967年起每两年发布一次包含税收支出数据的联邦补贴报告，1990年以来共计发布15份此类报告，涵盖29个预算年度的数据（截至2018年）。GTED将此计为29个已申报年度，因为数据按年度提供且可按年度进行查询与分析。数据库中的数据均采用统一格式进行处理，以提升纵向可比与跨国可比的程度。尽管收入放弃额估算值按照政府报告的原始格式提供（以当地货币单位、现价计价），但GTED同时也会提供换算为美元的相关数据，以及以**国内生产总值 (GDP)**和**税收收入 (Tax Revenue)**占比形式呈现的税收支出收入放弃额指标。计算这两项指标时，将以联合国大学世界发展经济学研究院（UNU-WIDER）政府收入数据集的数据作为输入来源。税收收入放弃额占税收收入的比重，以各国中央政府征收的总税收收入数据为基准进行计算。税收收入放弃额占税收收入的比重，以各国中央政府征收的总税收收入数据为基准进行计算。尽管已尽一切努力提升数据可比性，但对税收支出数据进行跨国分析时仍需谨慎。税收支出数据固有的核心问题在于**基准设定 (benchmarking)**：税收支出被定义为偏离（通常为各国特有的）标准税制或基准的条款。据此，GTED仅采用官方政府机构发布的数据，严格遵循各国自身的基准定义，不会尝试补充官方数据，也不会质疑不同国家所认定的标准税制或基准。关于政府计算税收支出条款财政成本所采用的方法，绝大多数国家均基于**收入放弃法 (revenue forgone approach)**发布税收支出数据：该方法基于纳税人当前的实际经济行为，估算因税收支出条款而减少的纳税人应纳税额。由于收入放弃法属于静态方法，基于该方法计算税收支出的财政成本时，不会考虑不同税收支出条款之间潜在的相互影响。因此，将单独计算且未考虑行为变化的各项税收支出条款的收入放弃额估算值进行加总，所得结果无法反映所有税收支出的总成本。尽管本数据库可为用户提供跨国或跨国集团间的比较机会，但我们需明确：任何此类比较都应考虑到申报层级的差异、各国基准体系的不同，以及收入放弃额估算方法本身存在的方法论缺陷。管辖区的收入组别与区域分类均采用世界银行最新发布的分类标准。