Browse by: "2015"

Taxing Wages provides unique information on the taxes paid on wages in OECD countries. It covers personal income taxes and social security contributions paid by employees; social security contributions and payroll taxes paid by employers and cash benefits paid by in-work families. The purpose is to illustrate how these taxes and benefits are calculated in each member country and to examine how they impact on household incomes. The results also enable quantitative cross-country comparisons of labour cost levels and the overall tax and benefit position of single persons and families on different levels of earnings.

The publication shows this information for eight household types which vary by income level and household composition and the results reported include the marginal and average tax burdens for one and two earner families and the total labour costs of employers. These data are widely used in academic research and in the preparation and evaluation of social and economic policy making.

Taxing Wages 2015 includes a special feature entitled: ‘Modelling the tax burden on labour income in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa.'

Energy is a critical input into the production and consumption patterns that support economic and social wellbeing. However, many forms of energy use contribute to the environmental and climate challenges societies face today. Taxation is a key tool by which governments can influence energy use to contain its environmental impacts. This report provides a systematic analysis of the structure and level of energy taxes in OECD and selected other countries; together, they cover 80% of global energy use.

This report builds on the 2013 edition of Taxing Energy Use, expanding the geographic coverage of the 2013 data set to include Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa. The report describes energy use, taxation and pricing in these countries and presents detailed graphical profiles of the structure of energy use and taxation for each.

The analysis reveals large differences in the taxation of energy across countries, although common patterns emerge. Transport taxes are considerably higher than in other sectors, where fuels that cause considerable harm for the environment and human health are often taxed at very low – or zero – rates. With few exceptions, countries' energy taxes do not harness the full power of taxes to reduce pollution and combat climate change.

Tax Administration 2015, produced under the auspices of the Forum on Tax Administration, is a unique and comprehensive survey of tax administration systems, practices and performance across 56 advanced and emerging economies (including all OECD, EU, and G20 members). Its starting point is the premise that revenue bodies can be better informed and work more effectively together given a broad understanding of the administrative context in which each operates. However, its information content is also likely to be of interest to many external parties (e.g. academics, external audit agencies, regional tax bodies, and international bodies providing technical assistance).

The series identifies some of the fundamental elements of national tax system administration and uses data, analyses and country examples to identify key trends, comparative levels of performance, recent and planned developments, and good practices.

This edition updates performance-related and descriptive material contained in prior editions with new data up to end-fiscal year 2013, and supplements this information on some new topics (e.g. aspects of compliance management and strategic priorities for increased use of on-line services). It also includes coverage of four additional countries (i.e. Costa Rica, Croatia, Morocco, and Thailand).

More than three million individuals who were born in Germany lived in another OECD country in 2010/11. To assess the potential that this group represents for the German labour market, this review establishes the distribution of German emigrants over OECD countries, as well as their age, sex, and educational attainment. Shifts in the German diaspora towards European destination countries and higher educational attainment are documented. The largest German diaspora still resides in the United States, but the diaspora in Switzerland and Spain has grown particularly quickly. International students from Germany have even come to represent the largest group of international students from any OECD country. While German emigrants experience less favourable labour market outcomes than their peers in Germany, the emigrants work disproportionately often in high-skill occupations. Survey evidence suggests that many Germans in Germany consider emigration and that many German emigrants are open to return. Those who have returned in recent years, however, appear to have a lower educational attainment than those leaving.

Alcoholic beverages, and their harmful use, have been familiar fixtures in human societies since the beginning of recorded history. Worldwide, alcohol is a leading cause of ill health and premature mortality. It accounts for 1 in 17 deaths, and for a significant proportion of disabilities, especially in men. In OECD countries, alcohol consumption is about twice the world average. Its social costs are estimated in excess of 1% of GDP in high- and middle-income countries. When it is not the result of addiction, alcohol use is an individual choice, driven by social norms, with strong cultural connotations. This is reflected in unique patterns of social disparity in drinking, showing the well-to-do in some cases more prone to hazardous use of alcohol, and a polarisation of problem-drinking at the two ends of the social spectrum. Certain patterns of drinking have social impacts, which provide a strong economic rationale for governments to influence the use of alcohol through policies aimed at curbing harms, including those occurring to people other than drinkers. Some policy approaches are more effective and efficient than others, depending on their ability to trigger changes in social norms, and on how well they can target the groups that are most at risk. This book provides a detailed examination of trends and social disparities in alcohol consumption. It offers a wide-ranging assessment of the health, social and economic impacts of key policy options for tackling alcohol-related harms in three OECD countries (Canada, the Czech Republic and Germany), extracting relevant policy messages for a broader set of countries.

This 2015 OECD report on fragility contributes to the broader debate to define and implement post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It points out that addressing fragility in the new framework will be crucial if strides in reducing poverty are to be made. It argues in favour of proposed SDG 16 – promoting peaceful and inclusive societies – which aims to reduce violence of all forms.

The 2015 report differs markedly from previous editions as it seeks to present a new understanding of fragility beyond fragile states. It assesses fragility as an issue of universal character that can affect all countries, not only those traditionally considered “fragile” or conflict-affected. To do so, it takes three indicators related to targets of SDG 16 and two from the wider SDG framework: violence, access to justice, accountable and inclusive institutions, economic inclusion and stability, and capacities to prevent and adapt to social, economic and environmental shocks and disasters. It applies them to all countries worldwide, and identifies the 50 most vulnerable ones in all five dimensions. The group of countries most challenged on all five fronts differs little from the traditional list of fragile states and economies. Still, several middle-income countries with disproportionately high levels of crime-related violence, sub-national conflict or poor access to justice move into the spotlight.

The report concludes that making headway on the targets will require building a new portfolio of tools and interventions, and an understanding of the role the international community should and can play in assisting this process.

This publication is a first response of the OECD to the issue of what role is, or can be, assigned to SOEs as part of national development strategies. The first part of the publication overviews the experiences of five countries (Brazil, China, India, Singapore and South Africa) with using SOEs, and other government-controlled entities as agents of their development strategies. The second part reviews the growing internationalisation of SOEs through foreign trade and investment. These show implications that the usefulness of SOEs in promoting economic development hinges on a number of factors, not least the level of economic development at the beginning of the process. Indeed, if the government’s ambition is to follow a development path already trod by numerous comparable nations it is relatively easy to hammer out a strategy and provide the SOEs with company-specific objectives toward the fulfilment of the strategy. However, experience also shows that some crucial conditions generally need to be met for such SOE-based strategies to be successful, taking into account the capacity of national bureaucracies and avoiding possible adverse impacts on international trade and investment.

Today’s children will need a balanced set of cognitive, social and emotional skills in order to succeed in modern life. Their capacity to achieve goals, work effectively with others and manage emotions will be essential to meet the challenges of the 21st century. While everyone acknowledges the importance of socio-emotional skills such as perseverance, sociability and self-esteem, there is often insufficient awareness of “what works” to enhance these skills. Teachers and parents don’t really know whether their efforts at developing these skills are paying off, and what they could do better. Policies and programmes designed to measure and enhance socio-emotional skills vary considerably within and across countries.

This report presents a synthesis of the OECD’s analytical work on the role of socio-emotional skills and proposes strategies to raise them. It analyses the effects of skills on a variety of measures of individual well-being and social progress, which covers aspects of our lives that are as diverse as education, labour market outcomes, health, family life, civic engagement and life satisfaction. The report discusses how policy makers, schools and families facilitate the development of socio-emotional skills through intervention programmes, teaching and parenting practices. Not only does it identify promising avenues to foster socio-emotional skills, it also shows that these skills can be measured meaningfully within cultural and linguistic boundaries.