OECD Tax Administration Maturity Model Series – Tax Compliance Burden Maturity Model. Maturity models are a relatively common tool, often used on a self-assessment basis, to help organisations understand their current leve l of capability in a particular functional, strategic or organisational area. In addition, maturity models, through the setting out of different levels and descriptors of maturity, are intended to provide a common understanding of the type of changes that would be likely to enable an organisation to reach a higher level of maturity over time should it so wish. The OECD Forum on Tax Administration (FTA) first developed a maturity model in 2016 in order to assess digital maturity in the two areas of natural systems/portals and big data. The digital maturity model was introduced in the OECD report Technologies for Better Tax Administration (OECD, 2016 [1]). Building on this, work began in 2018 to develop a set of stand-alone maturity models over time covering both functional areas of tax administration, such as auditing and human resource management, as well as more specialised areas such as enterprise risk management, analytics and the measurement and minimisation of compliance burdens. The maturity model contained in this report covers the specialised area of compliance burden measurement and minimisation. It is the second model in the planned series of FTA maturity models. The first model in that series, the OECD Tax Debt Management Maturity Model (OECD 2019), covers a traditional functional area of tax administration, employing a large number of staff. Unlike tax debt, consideration of compliance burdens and actions to minimise them may be the responsibility of an individual unit, an embedded function within several taxpayer-facing business units or some combination of arrangements.The model therefore focuses on a single overall description of maturity in this area rather than on the range of institutional arrangementsand procedures more appropriate for a model covering a broader tax administration function. The aim of the compliance burden maturity model is: • To allow tax administrations to self-assess through internal discussions as to where they see themselves as regards maturity in various aspects of addressing compliance burdens. • To provide senior leadership of the tax administration with a good oversight of the level of maturity based on input from other stakeholders across the organisation. This can help in deciding strategy and identifying areas for further improvement, including where that needs to be supported by the actions of other parts of the tax administration. • To allow tax administrations to compare where they sit compared to their peers. The results of the piloting of the model by twenty -one tax administrations (including some non-FTA members) were sent to the Secretariat. A “heat map” contained in this report shows the reported maturity of different administrations, on an anonymous basis. This report consists of four parts: • Chapter 1: Using the compliance burden maturity model. This provides an overview of the model and an explanation of how to use the model, including how to get the most out of discussions within the tax administration. • Chapter 2: Results of pilot self-assessments. This chapter sets out the anonymised results of the pilot undertaken to refine the maturity model. • Chapter 3: The full compliance burden maturity model. The chapter contains the model which can be used by tax administrations for self-assessment purposes and, following anonymised collation of results, for the purposes of international comparisons. • The Annex contains a record sheet for internal purposes, including to inform repeat use of the model from time to time, and for anonymised comparison purposes when submitted to the Secretariat. (This annex and the compliance burden maturity model are both available in word version on the FTA website.) The compliance burden maturity model was developed by an advisory group of tax administrations from Austria, Finland, Hungary, Singapore, Spain and the UK.
