World Bank Survey Points to Major Improvements in Mexico’s Tax Environment

London, United Kingdom, November 18, 2015 --(PR.com)-- Published annually, the World Bank Doing Business project provides objective measures of business regulations for local firms in 189 economies worldwide. The latest report, Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency, shows Mexico moving from 42nd to 38th place in terms of the easiest countries in which to do business, and up 11 places (from 103 to 92) in rankings of the country’s tax regime.

Member firms of the Russell Bedford International accounting network, including Russell Bedford México, contributed data to the report’s Paying Taxes survey. The new Paying Taxes report highlights the importance of electronic filing, citing more than 85 per cent of jurisdictions in Europe now allowing online submissions, in contrast to less than 30 per cent in 2006.

Mexico’s improved tax environment can be traced to a major reduction in the time businesses are having to spend on their tax compliance, down from 334 hours last year to 286 now: attributable to the elimination of the Business Flat Tax (IETU) and the greater availability of extensive electronic filing facilities, with corporate income tax, employers’ social security contributions, payroll, property, vehicle taxes and VAT all now payable online.

Russell Bedford México managing partner Jorge Jiménez commented: “It is gratifying to see Mexico’s improved tax environment recognised in this way. However, while considerably better than the average 361 hours per year recorded in other Latin American countries, Mexico’s performance still falls far short of the 176.6 hours recorded in the OECD countries. Further reform is clearly needed if Mexico is to become genuinely competitive worldwide.”

About Russell Bedford International

Established in 1983, Russell Bedford International is a global network of independent firms of accountants, auditors, tax advisers and business consultants. Ranked amongst the world’s leading accounting and audit networks, Russell Bedford is represented by some 600 partners, 5000 staff and 290 offices in more than 100 countries in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. Russell Bedford International is a member of the IFAC Forum of Firms and a member of EGIAN, the European Group of International Accounting Networks and Associations.

About the World Bank Doing Business project

The Doing Business project provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 189 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level.

The Doing Business project, launched in 2002, looks at domestic small and medium-size companies and measures the regulations applying to them through their life cycle.

By gathering and analyzing comprehensive quantitative data to compare business regulation environments across economies and over time, Doing Business encourages economies to compete towards more efficient regulation; offers measurable benchmarks for reform; and serves as a resource for academics, journalists, private sector researchers and others interested in the business climate of each economy.

In addition, Doing Business offers detailed subnational reports, which exhaustively cover business regulation and reform in different cities and regions within a nation. These reports provide data on the ease of doing business, rank each location, and recommend reforms to improve performance in each of the indicator areas. Selected cities can compare their business regulations with other cities in the economy or region and with the 189 economies that Doing Business has ranked.

The first Doing Business report, published in 2003, covered 5 indicator sets and 133 economies. The new report covers 11 indicator sets and 189 economies. Most indicator sets refer to a case scenario in the largest business city of each economy, except for 11 economies that have a population of more than 100 million as of 2013 (Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Russian Federation and the United States) where Doing Business, also collected data for the second largest business city. The data for these 11 economies are a population-weighted average for the two largest business cities. The project has benefited from feedback from governments, academics, practitioners and reviewers. The initial goal remains: to provide an objective basis for understanding and improving the regulatory environment for business around the world.