OECD Tax Policy Studies Taxing Powers of State and Local Government

In many OECD countries, issues in fiscal federalism feature prominently in the political debate. Policy discussions in this area should preferably be supported by internationally comparable statistical information on fiscal relations between levels of government, both in the areas of taxation and spending. The annual OECD Revenue Statistics publication reports tax revenues by sub-sector of general government. However, it does not indicate the degree of control state and local governments exercise over their tax revenues. Because such data are not available on an internationally comparable level from other sources, the OECD has developed a framework to assess and analyze the degree of control that sub-central governments have over their taxes. Results shown in this book serve to illustrate the great variety in tax autonomy at the level of sub-central government. This volume contains a description of fiscal relations in most of the nineteen countries concerned and it provides a set of detailed tables for each country, with revenues split by 1) level of sub-central government; 2) OECD classification of taxes; and 3) category of tax autonomy, following the framework developed by the Working Party on Tax Policy Analysis and Tax Statistics.