Firms visited or required meetings with tax officials (% of firms) - Country Ranking

Definition: Percent of firms that were visited or required to meet with tax officials.

Source: World Bank, Enterprise Surveys (http://www.enterprisesurveys.org/).

See also: Thematic map, Time series comparison

Find indicator:
Rank Country Value Year
1 Sudan 94.90 2014
2 Albania 93.20 2019
3 Dem. Rep. Congo 92.30 2013
4 Congo 91.90 2009
5 Central African Republic 89.80 2011
6 Yemen 89.70 2013
7 Ghana 87.90 2013
8 Sierra Leone 87.20 2017
9 Burundi 86.50 2014
10 Guinea-Bissau 86.20 2006
11 The Gambia 85.90 2018
12 Lao PDR 85.40 2018
13 Jordan 83.90 2019
13 Gabon 83.90 2009
15 Kyrgyz Republic 82.40 2019
15 Cameroon 82.40 2016
17 Chad 82.00 2018
18 Liberia 81.90 2017
19 Bhutan 81.50 2015
20 Afghanistan 80.50 2014
21 Solomon Islands 80.20 2015
22 Venezuela 78.80 2010
23 Tajikistan 78.70 2019
24 Belize 78.50 2010
25 Mali 77.60 2016
26 Togo 76.70 2016
26 Mozambique 76.70 2018
28 Guinea 76.20 2016
29 Egypt 76.00 2020
30 Côte d'Ivoire 75.90 2016
31 Zambia 75.80 2019
32 Zimbabwe 75.70 2016
33 Uganda 75.50 2013
34 Vanuatu 75.20 2009
35 Philippines 73.90 2015
36 Malawi 73.30 2014
37 St. Kitts and Nevis 72.50 2010
38 Antigua and Barbuda 71.90 2010
39 Mauritania 71.80 2014
40 Rwanda 71.30 2019
41 Guyana 70.70 2010
42 Burkina Faso 69.30 2009
43 Cabo Verde 68.90 2009
43 Eswatini 68.90 2016
45 Nigeria 68.80 2014
46 Montenegro 66.90 2019
46 Angola 66.90 2010
46 Nicaragua 66.90 2016
49 Lesotho 66.80 2016
50 Grenada 66.70 2010
51 Tanzania 65.60 2013
51 Nepal 65.60 2013
51 Pakistan 65.60 2013
54 Cambodia 64.80 2016
55 Niger 63.30 2017
56 Dominica 63.00 2010
57 Chile 62.50 2010
58 St. Lucia 62.20 2010
59 Moldova 62.00 2019
60 Bosnia and Herzegovina 61.60 2019
61 Fiji 61.30 2009
62 Benin 60.90 2016
63 North Macedonia 60.40 2019
64 Kenya 60.10 2018
65 Armenia 59.60 2020
66 Bangladesh 59.40 2013
66 China 59.40 2012
68 Peru 57.10 2017
69 Madagascar 56.10 2013
70 Mongolia 55.60 2019
71 Bulgaria 54.60 2019
72 Sri Lanka 54.30 2011
73 Iraq 54.20 2011
74 Bolivia 52.80 2017
75 Israel 52.20 2013
76 Samoa 52.10 2009
77 Myanmar 51.30 2016
78 Morocco 50.60 2019
79 Timor-Leste 50.10 2015
80 Djibouti 48.00 2013
81 Guatemala 47.30 2017
82 St. Vincent and the Grenadines 44.90 2010
83 Serbia 44.60 2019
84 Senegal 44.10 2014
85 Papua New Guinea 43.70 2015
86 Honduras 43.10 2016
87 Ethiopia 42.80 2015
88 Vietnam 42.70 2015
89 Azerbaijan 42.40 2019
90 Trinidad and Tobago 42.30 2010
91 Thailand 41.90 2016
92 Argentina 41.10 2017
93 Botswana 40.70 2010
94 El Salvador 40.50 2016
95 Greece 39.20 2018
96 Brazil 39.00 2009
97 Mexico 38.10 2010
98 Panama 37.60 2010
98 Czech Republic 37.60 2019
100 Turkey 36.50 2019
101 Namibia 35.90 2014
102 Romania 35.80 2019
103 India 35.30 2014
104 Lebanon 35.00 2019
105 Hungary 34.50 2019
106 Jamaica 34.00 2010
107 Ukraine 32.80 2019
108 Barbados 32.30 2010
109 Paraguay 31.30 2017
110 Kazakhstan 30.90 2019
111 Uzbekistan 29.10 2019
112 Slovak Republic 28.70 2019
113 Belgium 27.60 2020
114 Costa Rica 25.50 2010
115 South Africa 25.20 2020
116 Russia 24.60 2019
117 Suriname 24.30 2018
118 Slovenia 23.90 2019
119 Luxembourg 23.70 2020
120 Estonia 23.50 2019
121 Uruguay 22.80 2017
122 Croatia 22.70 2019
123 Colombia 22.40 2017
124 Georgia 22.30 2019
125 Tonga 21.90 2009
126 Poland 21.80 2019
127 Malaysia 21.60 2015
128 Dominican Republic 20.30 2016
129 Mauritius 18.90 2009
130 Ecuador 17.50 2017
131 Belarus 17.10 2018
132 Latvia 16.60 2019
133 Lithuania 16.30 2019
134 The Bahamas 15.30 2010
135 Malta 13.50 2019
136 Netherlands 12.50 2020
137 Indonesia 11.90 2015
138 Cyprus 11.10 2019
139 Eritrea 10.40 2009
140 Portugal 10.10 2019
141 Ireland 10.00 2020
142 Italy 9.40 2019
143 Tunisia 9.30 2020
144 Sweden 6.50 2020
145 Denmark 6.20 2020
146 Finland 4.30 2020

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Development Relevance: Firms evaluating investment options, governments interested in improving business conditions, and economists seeking to explain economic performance have all grappled with defining and measuring the business environment. The firm-level data from Enterprise Surveys provide a useful tool for benchmarking economies across a large number of indicators measured at the firm level. Informality is associated with business operations without registration. The informal sector in an economy may be a source of unfair competition to formal firms and also deprive governments of potential tax revenue and diminish a government's capacity for regulatory oversight. Informality can be defined along different dimensions such as operating without registration, income tax evasion, labor tax evasion, or operating outside the legal framework of an economy. Firms may show different degrees of informality along these dimensions which may also overlap. A large informal sector has serious consequences for the formal private sector, and may pose unfair competition for formal firms. It is an approximation to the prevalence of informality in the private economy.

Limitations and Exceptions: The sampling methodology for Enterprise Surveys is stratified random sampling. In a simple random sample, all members of the population have the same probability of being selected and no weighting of the observations is necessary. In a stratified random sample, all population units are grouped within homogeneous groups and simple random samples are selected within each group. This method allows computing estimates for each of the strata with a specified level of precision while population estimates can also be estimated by properly weighting individual observations. The sampling weights take care of the varying probabilities of selection across different strata. Under certain conditions, estimates' precision under stratified random sampling will be higher than under simple random sampling (lower standard errors may result from the estimation procedure). The strata for Enterprise Surveys are firm size, business sector, and geographic region within a country. Firm size levels are 5-19 (small), 20-99 (medium), and 100+ employees (large-sized firms). Since in most economies, the majority of firms are small and medium-sized, Enterprise Surveys oversample large firms since larger firms tend to be engines of job creation. Sector breakdown is usually manufacturing, retail, and other services. For larger economies, specific manufacturing sub-sectors are selected as additional strata on the basis of employment, value-added, and total number of establishments figures. Geographic regions within a country are selected based on which cities/regions collectively contain the majority of economic activity. Ideally the survey sample frame is derived from the universe of eligible firms obtained from the country’s statistical office. Sometimes the master list of firms is obtained from other government agencies such as tax or business licensing authorities. In some cases, the list of firms is obtained from business associations or marketing databases. In a few cases, the sample frame is created via block enumeration, where the World Bank “manually” constructs a list of eligible firms after 1) partitioning a country’s cities of major economic activity into clusters and blocks, 2) randomly selecting a subset of blocks which will then be enumerated. In surveys conducted since 2005-06, survey documentation which explains the source of the sample frame and any special circumstances encountered during survey fieldwork are included with the collected datasets. Obtaining panel data, i.e. interviews with the same firms across multiple years, is a priority in current Enterprise Surveys. When conducting a new Enterprise Survey in a country where data was previously collected, maximal effort is expended to re-interview as many firms (from the prior survey) as possible. For these panel firms, sampling weights can be adjusted to take into account the resulting altered probabilities of inclusion in the sample frame.

Original Source Notes: All surveys were administered using the Enterprise Surveys methodology as outlined in the Methodology page which can be found from www.enterprisesurveys.org.

Statistical Concept and Methodology: Firm-level surveys have been conducted since the 1990's by different units within the World Bank. Since 2005-06, most data collection efforts have been centralized within the Enterprise Analysis Unit. Surveys implemented by the Enterprise Analysis Unit follow the Global Methodology. Private contractors conduct the Enterprise Surveys on behalf of the World Bank. Due to sensitive survey questions addressing business-government relations and bribery-related topics, private contractors, rather than any government agency or an organization/institution associated with government, are hired by the World Bank to collect the data. Confidentiality of the survey respondents and the sensitive information they provide is necessary to ensure the greatest degree of survey participation, integrity and confidence in the quality of the data. Surveys are usually carried out in cooperation with business organizations and government agencies promoting job creation and economic growth, but confidentiality is never compromised. The Enterprise Survey is answered by business owners and top managers. Sometimes the survey respondent calls company accountants and human resource managers into the interview to answer questions in the sales and labor sections of the survey. Typically 1200-1800 interviews are conducted in larger economies, 360 interviews are conducted in medium-sized economies, and for smaller economies, 150 interviews take place. The manufacturing and services sectors are the primary business sectors of interest. This corresponds to firms classified with ISIC codes 15-37, 45, 50-52, 55, 60-64, and 72 (ISIC Rev.3.1). Formal (registered) companies with 5 or more employees are targeted for interview. Services firms include construction, retail, wholesale, hotels, restaurants, transport, storage, communications, and IT. Firms with 100% government/state ownership are not eligible to participate in an Enterprise Survey. Occasionally, for a few surveyed countries, other sectors are included in the companies surveyed such as education or health-related businesses. In each country, businesses in the cities/regions of major economic activity are interviewed. In some countries, other surveys, which depart from the usual Enterprise Survey methodology, are conducted. Examples include 1) Informal Surveys- surveys of informal (unregistered) enterprises, 2) Micro Surveys- surveys fielded to registered firms with less than five employees, and 3) Financial Crisis Assessment Surveys- short surveys administered by telephone to assess the effects of the global financial crisis of 2008-09. The Enterprise Surveys Unit uses two instruments: the Manufacturing Questionnaire and the Services Questionnaire. Although many questions overlap, some are only applicable to one type of business. For example, retail firms are not asked about production and nonproduction workers. The standard Enterprise Survey topics include firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs/labor, workforce composition, bribery, licensing, infrastructure, trade, crime, competition, capacity utilization, land and permits, taxation, informality, business-government relations, innovation and technology, and performance measures. Over 90% of the questions objectively ascertain characteristics of a country’s business environment. The remaining questions assess the survey respondents’ opinions on what are the obstacles to firm growth and performance. The mode of data collection is face-to-face interviews.

Aggregation method: Unweighted average

Periodicity: Annual