About the study

The Paying Taxes study is part of the World Bank Group's Doing Business project, which aims to provide a quantitative measure of the regulations applying to domestic, small- and medium-sized enterprises, using 10 business factors - including paying taxes.

Using a consistent set of assumptions, Paying Taxes looks at the tax systems in 183 economies, to assess how they apply to and affect a standard case-study company. The objective is to ensure that the results can be measured on the same basis for each economy, which enables comparisons to be made.

The study provides quantitative data to inform and stimulate discussion, enabling governments to benchmark their tax systems against others, and to identify possible priority areas for reform.

Along with the ranking data and the methodology, the fourth edition of Paying Taxes also covers:

• Key reforms to date: findings of the World Bank Group's Doing Business 2010 report
• Commentary on the key indicators
• Further insights on tax administration

The Paying Taxes indicator covers the cost of taxes that are borne by the case study company, as well as the administrative burden of tax compliance for the company, both of which are important from the business point of view. They are measured using three sub-indicators:

• The Total Tax Rate (the cost of all taxes borne)
• The time needed to comply with the major taxes (profit taxes, labour taxes, mandatory contributions, and consumption taxes)
• The number of tax payments

The results for all three sub-indicators, the rankings by economy for these sub-indicators and the overall rankings are included in Appendix 1. The full data tables are also available. Further details on all the underlying data are available at the Doing Business Web site.

The Paying Taxes study uses the methodology of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Total Tax Contribution framework, which is designed to help companies identify their true tax contribution, either in a particular country, or on a global basis.