DOI: 10.3886/icpsr38308.v1
title: Financing the State: Government Tax Revenue from 1800 to 2012, 31 countries
title: Version 1

description: This dataset presents information on historical central government revenues for 31 countries in Europe and the Americas for the period from 1800 (or independence) to 2012. The countries included are: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany (West Germany between 1949 and 1990), Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In other words, the dataset includes all South American, North American, and Western European countries with a population of more than one million, plus Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Mexico. The dataset contains information on the public finances of central governments. To make such information comparable cross-nationally the researchers chose to normalize nominal revenue figures in two ways: (i) as a share of the total budget, and (ii) as a share of total gross domestic product. The total tax revenue of the central state is disaggregated guided by the Government Finance Statistics Manual 2001 of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which provides a classification of types of revenue, and describes in detail the contents of each classification category. Given the paucity of detailed historical data and the needs of our project, researchers combined some subcategories. First, they were interested in total tax revenue, as well as the shares of total revenue coming from direct and indirect taxes. Further, they measured two sub-categories of direct taxation, namely taxes on property and income. For indirect taxes, they separated excises, consumption, and customs.
description: The goal of this study is to provide the most comprehensive data on government revenues for the selected countries from 1800 (or independence) until today. Another goal is to create long time series that are internally consistent within a country over time and that connect to contemporary datasets which in turn allow easy continual updates in the future.
description: Researchers assembled information on the public finances of central governments as well as the level of economic activity of more than a dozen commonly used cross-national databases. To complement and adjudicate between existing databases, they combined information from these existing data collection efforts with additional country-specific sources. For more information on sampling and study design, please see the P.I. codebook.
description: This study includes variables on countries' nominal and real Gross Domestic Product, government revenues, and shares of direct, indirect, income, property, customs, excise, and consumption taxes.
description: Datasets: DS1: Financing the State: Government Tax Revenue from 1800 to 2012, 31 countries
description: All South American, North American, and Western European countries with a population of more than one million, plus Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Mexico. Smallest Geographic Unit: Country