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, 116 jurisdictions are currently classified as Non-reporting Jurisdictions. The remaining 102 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 Type, Policy Objective, Beneficiaries and Type of TE used. In some cases, second- or third-level categories have been introduced. For instance, Fuel Tax data is categorised at the third level within Tax Type: Taxes on Good and Services Excise Taxes Fuel Tax. If the information for a record is not available or unclear, the respective category is classified as Not stated/unclear. When governments do not publish provision-level data but rather some kind of aggregated information, the GTED gathers this aggregate data.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 TE reporting or TE report 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 regular and irregular 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, regular 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 16 such reports have been issued since 1990, containing data on 29 budget years (until 2021). The GTED counts this as 31 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 GDP and Tax Revenue – 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 benchmarking. 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 revenue forgone approach 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.全球税收支出数据集（GTED）收录了1990年以来全球各国政府公开发布的所有税收支出（Tax Expenditures，TEs）相关数据，覆盖共计218个司法管辖区。经过分步检索流程，目前已有116个司法管辖区被归类为「未报告司法管辖区」，剩余102个司法管辖区提供了一定类型的TEs数据，均由GTED团队采集整理。 只要可获取，GTED会采集各项TEs条款的收入损失估算值及受益主体数量，同时采集相关元数据，包括TEs条款的定义、法律依据及实施期限。 GTED中的每条记录分为四大核心类别：税种（Tax Type）、政策目标、受益主体及TEs类型。部分场景下还增设了二级或三级分类。例如，燃油税数据在「税种」类别下被归类至三级分类：货物与服务税→消费税→燃油税。若某条记录的相关信息缺失或表述模糊，则对应类别将被标记为「未说明/模糊不清」。 当政府未发布条款级别的明细数据，仅提供某种汇总信息时，GTED会采集该类汇总数据。同理，若政府仅披露特定领域的TEs信息（如投资税收优惠、所得税相关TEs），GTED也仅呈现该领域的对应数据。「TEs报告」或「TEs报告文件」的表述覆盖范围较广，涵盖各类公开文档：从纳入政府预算文件的年度综合性TEs报告，到公共机构发布的、针对特定TEs机制提供汇总信息的单份文件均可纳入。报告的最低要求是必须包含某种可体现TEs条款实际使用情况的信息。例如，由政府投资促进机构发布的投资类税收扣除清单，若未提供收入损失估算值或其他可帮助GTED用户了解对应TEs实际使用情况的数据，则不被视为合格的TEs报告文件。 GTED区分「定期报告」与「不定期报告」。例如，某国在1995年至2005年间按年度发布报告，但后续未再持续发布，则该段时间的报告序列不会被GTED认定为定期报告。同理，「定期」并不必然等同于年度报告。以德国为例，自1967年起，该国每两年发布一次包含TEs数据的联邦补贴报告，1990年以来共计发布16份此类报告，涵盖截至2021年的29个预算年度。GTED将其计为31个报告年度，因为数据按年度维度提供，可按年度进行查询与分析。 数据集采用统一格式进行处理，旨在提升纵向可比与跨国可比水平。尽管收入损失估算值按照各国政府上报的原始格式（以本币计价、现价计算）提供，但GTED同时提供换算为美元的数值，以及以国内生产总值（Gross Domestic Product，GDP）和税收收入占比形式呈现的TEs收入损失指标。计算这两项指标时，输入数据取自联合国大学世界发展经济学研究院政府收入数据集（UNU-WIDER Government Revenue Dataset）。其中，税收收入占比的计算采用各国中央政府征收的总税收收入数据。该税收收入占比的计算同样采用各国中央政府征收的总税收收入数据。 尽管已尽最大努力确保数据集的可比性，对TEs数据进行跨国分析仍需谨慎。TEs数据固有的核心问题在于基准界定：TEs被定义为偏离（通常为各国特有的）标准税收结构或基准的政策安排。据此，GTED直接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或质疑不同国家认定的标准税制或基准。 关于各国政府计算TEs财政成本的方法，绝大多数国家采用「收入损失法（revenue forgone approach）」，该方法基于纳税人当前的实际经济行为，估算其因TEs条款而减少的应纳税额。由于收入损失法属于静态方法，在计算单项TEs的财政成本时，未考虑不同TEs条款之间的潜在联动效应。因此，将单独计算且未考虑行为变化的单项TEs收入损失估算值进行加总，无法得到覆盖所有TEs的总财政成本。 尽管本数据集为用户提供了跨国或国家群组间的比较可能，我们仍需明确：任何此类比较都应充分考虑不同的报告水平、各国基准体系的差异，以及收入损失估算方法本身存在的方法论缺陷。 国家收入组别与区域分类采用世界银行最新发布的分类标准。