Course background

Tax gap analysis provides tax administrators and policy makers, and their stakeholders, with a measure of the amount of tax revenues lost due to taxpayer noncompliance and avoidance, and the impact of government tax policy choices. A tax gap is usually defined as the difference between the potential revenue of the underlying economic tax base and the actually collected revenue. Under this broad definition, the tax gap can be decomposed into two main components―the impact of noncompliance (compliance gap), and the impact of policy choices (policy gap). Possessing knowledge of the size of the tax gap and how it is composed is essential in terms of the authorities’ possibilities for making the best possible policy choices and developing effective tax administration programs to mitigate key taxpayer compliance problems.

What will you learn

Participants will be given an introduction to tax gap analysis and its measurement using the IMF's model. The course will also discuss how tax gap analysis can be used in modern tax administration, how to use it to help understand the informal economy, and its regional context. The model presented in the course will be the one used by RA-GAP staff to measure the VAT gap. 

Who should attend

Participating countries are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. Each participant country may want to assign one participant from the tax administration and one person from the Ministry of Finance or two participants from the tax administration. 

Country teams attending the course should include staff with detailed knowledge of: their VAT policy structure, National Accounts statistics, VAT administrative practices, VAT micro-data available in the tax administration databases.  It is not required that all participants have knowledge in all these areas, it is the team as a whole which will be required to have coverage of these areas of knowledge. Participants shall be experienced in data analysis, and be skilled in the use of Excel.

Preferable participants shall be able to understand and speak English well enough to understand complex terminology and make himself/herself understandable on the course matter.

The course will be designed and delivered by the International Monetary Fund.

Faculty

• Mr. Eric Hutton, IMF Expert
• Mr. Mick Thackray, IMF Expert
• Ms. Elena D'Agosto, IMF Expert
• Mr. Stefano Pisani, IMF Expert
• Mr. Ryan Yost, IMF Expert

Partners

This learning initiative was supported by: