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Global & Comparative Tax Law Research Guide

This Guide will assist you to use research tools to identify all tax laws in every country, and to compare tax laws across all jurisdictions.

Worldwide Tax Laws - Finding Tax Law Commentary and Legislation for all Countries

Domestic tax legislation can usually be found in the open access legislation databases of all countries. However, if you want one resource that can be used to research multiple countries in English, we recommend the IBFD tax research platform (UniMelb staff & student access).
IBFD provides tax law information for all countries by country or topic via:
  • Topical Analyses (comprehensive descriptions of major tax topics, including country-by-country analyses)
  • Country Key Features (rates and other essential features of national and sub-national tax regimes)
  • Country Surveys (main facts of a country’s tax regime - grouped into Individual Taxation,  Corporate Taxation and Business & Investment)
  • Country Analyses (detailed descriptions of the corporate and individual tax provisions for a particular country and how they relate to other jurisdictions and regulations)

NOTE: while all the country databases will describe the relevant  law and rules, only the Country Analysis database will name the domestic legislation that applies to individual and corporate tax. Navigate to Statutory Framework in the introductory chapters for individual or corporate tax in each country to identify the legislation. Similarly, only the Country Surveys database will name the domestic legislation that applies to business and investment. Navigate to Regulatory Framework in the introductory chapter for each country.

NOTE ALSO that, apart from linking to full text US legislation, these databases do not link to the full text of domestic legislation - you will have to find this in individual country legislation databases.