This is the fifth edition of Tax Policy Reforms: OECD and Selected Partner Economies, an annual publication that provides comparative information on tax reforms across countries and tracks tax policy developments over time. The report covers the latest tax policy reforms in all OECD countries, as well as in Argentina, China, Indonesia and South Africa.

The report provides an overview of the tax measures introduced during the COVID-19 crisis across almost 70 jurisdictions, including all OECD and G20 countries and 21 additional members of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting. It examines how tax policy responses have varied across countries and evolved over the last year.

This is the seventh edition of Tax Policy Reforms: OECD and Selected Partner Economies, an annual publication that provides comparative information on tax reforms across countries and tracks tax policy developments over time. The report covers the tax policy reforms introduced or announced in 71 member jurisdictions of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, including all OECD countries, for the 2021 calendar year. In addition to providing an overview of tax policy reforms, and the macroeconomic and tax revenue context in which measures were introduced, the report also contains a Special Feature that examines government responses to rising energy prices and offers some policy recommendations in the event that prices remain high.

Based on a survey of about 2,500 US resident adults, we show that people who have experienced serious illness or job loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, or who personally know someone who has, favor a temporary progressive levy or structural progressive tax reform to a greater extent than others in the sample, controlling for income, demographic characteristics, and other factors. People who reveal preferences for spending items (more on police, military, border protection; less on education, health, environment) that are associated with communitarian (rather than universalist) moral perspectives generally show weaker support for progressive reforms, but more communitarians change their views as a result of personal experience. The results are consistent with previous findings that economic upheavals can mold individuals’ views on policy matters.

This report is part of the OECD Tax Policy Reviews publication series. The Reviews are intended to provide independent, comprehensive and comparative assessments of OECD member and non-member countries’ tax systems as well as concrete recommendations for tax policy reform. By identifying tailored tax policy reform options, the objective of the Reviews is to enhance the design of existing tax policies and to support the adoption of new reforms.

This annual publication gives a conceptual framework to define which government receipts should be regarded as taxes. It presents a unique set of detailed and internationally comparable tax data in a common format for all OECD countries from 1965 onwards.