The annual publication "Tax Policy Reforms: OECD and Selected Partner Economies" provides a summary and comparison of tax reforms across countries. The report documents the evolution of tax policy changes over time and highlights recent trends in country tax policy. This year’s edition covers tax reforms introduced or announced during the 2023 calendar year within 90 member jurisdictions of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, including all OECD countries.

Faced with consecutive challenges coupled with an uncertain macroeconomic outlook, policymakers have been navigating a complex terrain. Policymakers are tasked with raising additional domestic resources while simultaneously extending or enhancing tax relief to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis that is affecting households and businesses around the world. This balancing act has led to a range of strategies. On the one hand, governments further protected and broadened their domestic tax bases, increased rates, or phased out existing tax relief. On the other hand, reforms also kept or expanded personal income tax relief to households, temporary VAT reductions, or cuts to environmentally related excise taxes.

The trend towards tax decreasing reforms observed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent period of high inflation is showing signs of deceleration or reversal. While recent editions of the report have identified a trend of countries introducing both temporary and permanent tax concessions to support individuals and businesses during global macroeconomic shocks, 2023 has seen a relative decrease in rate cuts and base narrowing measures in favour of rate increases and base broadening initiatives across most tax types.

A notable shift occurred in the taxation of businesses, where the trend in corporate income tax (CIT) rate cuts seems to have halted, with far more jurisdictions implementing rate increases than decreases in 2023, for the first time since the first edition of the Tax Policy Reforms report in 2015. As the global economy continues to recover, this change reflects the need for additional revenues and an effort to enhance equity within the tax system. With statutory tax rates at historic lows, responses suggest that countries wanting to offer favourable CIT treatment to businesses are choosing base narrowing measures rather than rate decreases. In parallel, significant progress has been made towards implementing the Global Minimum Tax (GMT) to establish a worldwide floor for the effective tax rates of large multinational enterprises (MNEs). As of April 2024, 60 jurisdictions had announced publicly that they are taking steps towards introducing CIT or implementing the GMT, with 36 taking steps towards an application of the Global Minimum Tax starting in 2024, and some expect to implement legislation taking effect from 2025. Climate considerations are also increasingly influencing the design and use of tax incentives, with more jurisdictions implementing generous base narrowing measures to promote clean investments and facilitate the transition towards less carbon-intensive capital.

Although cuts to personal income taxes (PIT) remain a tool for supporting economic recovery and household incomes, a growing share of jurisdictions covered in this report are implementing social security contribution (SSC) increases. During the pandemic, PIT and SSC reforms were crucial for providing tax relief to households. However, since the pandemic, against a backdrop of demographic shifts such as population ageing, rising healthcare costs, and a heightened need for social protection financing, there has been a growing trend to broaden and increase SSCs. PIT reforms generally focused on supporting low- and middle-income households, with the number of base narrowing measures continuing to significantly exceed base broadening measures. Some countries also introduced progressive reforms shifting the tax burden away from low-income households and three countries increased their top PIT rate. Meanwhile PIT base broadening reforms were either implemented because the original motivations for the tax relief had dissipated, or due to a need for additional revenues to finance other government priorities. Reforms to capital income taxes remain modest as in previous years.

After various jurisdictions introduced significant VAT relief measures on energy products in response to a sharp rise in energy costs and subsequent inflation, the pace of such VAT cuts and base narrowing measures is slowing, with some scaling back VAT relief measures on those products. A large share of jurisdictions expanded or extended temporarily reduced VAT rates on energy products, allowing governments to enact visible policy measures that could have an immediate impact on household budgets. There was also a notable trend of jurisdictions using the VAT system to encourage the transition to lower-carbon economies through reduced rates for electric vehicles or zero rates for solar panels, for example. In contrast to previous years, however, six jurisdictions increased their standard VAT rate. Additionally, in an ongoing effort to raise revenues and promote public health by discouraging the consumption of certain products or activities, several high and upper-middle-income countries have intensified their health-related excise taxes, especially on tobacco, alcoholic beverages, sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs), and gambling.

The ongoing cost-of-living pressures continued to prompt jurisdictions to reduce taxes on energy use, a trend that initially emerged in 2022. Despite these inflation-induced challenges, however, several primarily high-income countries increased their carbon tax in 2023 to support the transition to a low-carbon economy. As the year progressed, the challenge for policy makers was to move from what were initially broad support measures to more targeted policy responses, due to the rising fiscal costs of these measures and their potential to undermine environmental incentives. In 2023 high-income countries thus generally opted for support measures that reduced excise tax rates only and avoided adjusting their carbon tax rates.