Press Release No. 15/374

Press Release: IMF Publishes Worldwide Government Revenue Database

August 6, 2015

The IMF today published for the first time the World Revenue Longitudinal Dataset (WoRLD), which provides data on tax and non-tax revenues for 186 countries over the period 1990-2013. The database includes broad country coverage and time periods, and it is the result of combining in a consistent manner data from two other IMF publications -- the IMF Government Finance Statistics and World Economic Outlook (WEO)-- and drawing on the OECD’s Revenue Statistics and Revenue Statistics in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Vitor Gaspar, Director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, said the purpose of releasing the database for general use is to “encourage and facilitate informed discussion and analysis of tax policy and administration for the full range of countries, the need for which was highlighted most recently during the Financing for Development conference in Addis Ababa.”

Constructing the database was a challenging exercise. An accompanying background note will be released in the coming weeks to explain the methodology. The database will be updated annually and will include information from IMF staff reports.

The database is available for download free of charge on the IMF e-Library data portal (http://data.imf.org/revenues).