Using tax administration data for research purposes

UNU-WIDER and International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) are organizing a policy workshop on ‘Using tax administration data for research purposes’ in Addis Ababa, on 9 February 2016. The workshop brings together officials from tax authorities, statistical offices and the research community to discuss ways to improve access to tax register data in developing countries.

In the workshop, representatives from Nordic countries —where tax register data has been for years shared with researchers— tell about the type of data they have, how it is anonymized and made securely accessible to researchers and how policy-relevant research can be made based on it. Also, representatives from Brazil, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and South Africa, where similar initiatives have been taking place in the last few years, contribute their experiences. Reflecting on these experiences, the workshop discusses ways how similar practices could be planned to take place in new, interested countries.

The workshop is part of the UNU-WIDER’s research project ‘The economics and politics of taxation and social protection’, which takes an innovative and integrated approach to the study of taxation and social protection systems in developing countries.