Paying Taxes 2009

The global picture



The World Bank – IFC Doing Business project includes a measure of the ease of paying taxes for small to medium sized domestic companies in 181 economies around the world.

The Doing Business 'paying taxes' indicator is based on a case study company and assesses taxes from this company’s perspective using three indicators:

• The Total Tax Rate (the cost of all taxes borne by the company)
• The time taken to comply with the major taxes
• The number of tax payments for the major taxes

The data on all three sub-indicators, the rankings by economy for these sub indicators and the overall rankings are included in Appendix 1. Further details on all the underlying data are available at www.doingbusiness.org/ExploreTopics/PayingTaxes/

In last year’s publication we focused on explaining the methodology and understanding the results. These are given this year in Appendix 2.

This year’s report combines a summary of the findings on the 'paying taxes' indicator (from the recent Doing Business 2009 report prepared by the World Bank – IFC), and commentary based on the experience of PricewaterhouseCoopers' firms around the world. These commentaries focus on some of the issues highlighted by the results and on how the findings are being used by governments in all parts of the world.

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Paying Taxes 2009 (2576kb)