The Global Tax Expenditures Database (GTED) keeps growing almost two years after its launch. With the latest update, new data for 46 countries have been incorporated and the GTED has grown by more than 10,000 new revenue forgone estimates. The number of reporting countries has risen from 97 two years ago to 106, and more than 100,000 revenue forgone entries related to over 24,000 provisions are captured in the latest version of the database (GTED Version 1.1.5). However, much remains to be done since there are still 112 non-reporting countries that have never published any tax expenditure report, and the quality and scope of the existing data vary significantly and can be strikingly poor.
As the new GTED version shows, the use of tax expenditures has grown considerably worldwide, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenue forgone from tax expenditures amounted to 30 percent of actual tax revenue and almost 4.4 percent of GDP in 2021, on average. This is much higher than the average 22.9 percent of tax revenue and 3.9 percent of GDP in the years 2000-2020.
Check out the new reporting countries: Algeria, Georgia, Maldives, Togo.
