The First Meeting of the Working Group on Measurement of Tax Expenditure was successfully concluded. It was held from November 30 through December 2, 2009 at the CIAT Executive Secretariat headquarters in Panama City and marked the initiation of activities for preparing the CIAT Manual for the Measurement of Tax Expenditure and the Comparative Study based thereon, which will become reference documents for the member countries to improve their measurement of tax expenditure and standardize the results.

The Working Group consists of six member countries. The participants in the first meeting were Messrs. Raimundo Eloi de Carvalho and Filipe Nogueira da Gama from the Secretariat of Federal Revenues of Brazil, Patricio Barra Aeloiza from the Internal Revenue Service of Chile, Mauro Andino from the Internal Revenue Service of Ecuador, Ms. María Luz Gómez López from the State Agency of Tax Administration of Spain and Mr. Hugo Edgardo Roldán Valdez from the Superintendency of Tax Administration of Guatemala. The CIAT Executive Secretariat representatives were the Director of Tax Studies, María Raquel Ayala Doval, the Head of the Spanish Mission, Luis Cremades and the Manager of Tax Research, Miguel Pecho. The Executive Secretariat is in charge of the technical coordination of the group.

Welcome statements were made by Messrs. Claudino Pita and Marcio Verdi, outgoing and incoming CIAT Executive Secretaries, respectively. Dr. Pita highlighted the importance of measuring tax expenditures, not only for budgetary, but especially tax purposes, since in many countries they have served as basis for promoting tax reforms that have eliminated tax incentives which have not been very effective in achieving the  social or economic objectives of the State.

The meeting was devoted to reviewing the main methodological conventions which the CIAT Executive Secretariat proposed for doing the work and adjusting the Questionnaire that will be sent shortly to the member countries for diagnosing the current situation. Finally, the tentative indexes of the final documents were outlined and a Virtual Forum was opened through the CIAT computerized platform for recording all the discussions of the Working Group members and the pertinent bibliography on the topic.

Two additional face-to-face meetings were agreed, which would be held in the second and fourth quarter of 2010.   The activities of the Working Group and the presentation of the final results of the Group at the General Assembly in Quito, Ecuador in 2011 were also agreed.