The second meeting of the Working Group on Benchmarking for Tax Administrations, which took place from May 12 to 14, 2009, concluded successfully at CIAT’s Executive Secretariat. This meeting was geared at providing more information on this tool for tax management processes, sharing knowledge and experiences in each country, identifying its strengths and weaknesses and establishing the initial set of indicators.

The working group was made up of 6 member countries, and the following persons attended this event:  Martin Slemenson, Argentina, Normand Theberge, Canada, Raul Pertierra, United States, Angel Gonzalez, France, Manfredo Chocano, Guatemala and Subert Gilbert, Trinidad and Tobago.  Welcome remarks were made by Mr. Marcio Verdi, CIAT Operations Director and Socorro Velazquez and Raul Zambrano, participated on behalf of the Executive Secretariat.

The main topic of the meeting was the presentation of the computer system developed by the Executive Secretariat that will be used in the Benchmarking Program to facilitate the comparison of indicators among member countries. This tool allows duly authorized people from each administration to update their own indicators, thus making the information entry process much faster.

It was agreed that by May or June 2010, the tool will be used by most of the 38 member countries. The computer application will use an Internet platform and the initial indicators shall be presented to the member countries’ representatives in a timely manner. To this end, we might use CIAT’s institutional meetings, without prejudice of the organization of a specific seminar to launch it.

The member countries of the working group agreed to make their best effort to update the values of the initial indicators for the three last years, as soon as possible. This will allow them to show the other countries the benefits derived from its utilization.