The 2024 edition of the Tax Administration Series (TAS), like its predecessors, provides comparative information on advanced and emerging tax administrations globally and seeks to draw out some of the trends and challenges they face.
The purpose and value of the TAS, first published in 2004, is to assist administrations, governments, taxpayers and other stakeholders towards identifying improvements in the effectiveness of tax administration. This potential is unlocked through its data but also the more than one hundred examples of innovative initiatives and approaches implemented by tax administrations. I congratulate my fellow colleagues for the great work they are doing.
The past decade has seen significant changes in the operating models of tax administrations often driven through external factors such as the digitalisation of the wider economy, technological advancements, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This edition continues to observe the impacts of those developments. E-filing, e‑payment, e-communication, the use of artificial intelligence and application programming interfaces have become mainstream in the past few years, and many administrations are now looking ahead and embarking on a wider digital transformation of their tax operations. Of course, we should not forget that as part of our journey we need to ensure that we provide accessible formats, multilingual support, and offline service options that can bridge gaps in communication and access, so that all citizens benefit from our services, including those with disabilities or those without internet access.
In addition, TAS 2024 also explores a variety of areas that have not been examined in such detail since 2019. A treasure trove of new data, the publication enables a closer look at tax administration operations, processes and arrangements covering not only the regular annual performance data but also information on compliance risk management, governance and human resource management, amongst other things.
I would like to express my appreciation to those involved in producing this engaging and informative report, and in particular Oliver Petzold as well as Paul Marsh and Fiona May of the OECD Secretariat. This edition of the TAS will continue to help us all understand more about the challenges that we face individually and collectively. Through this, not only can we consider what we might do in our own jurisdictions but also identify where tax administrations can collaborate to improve our services to taxpayers across the globe.
Bob Hamilton
Chair of the OECD Forum on Tax Administration
Commissioner of the Canada Revenue Agency