paying PIT, but do not report doing so. Nonetheless, we are only able to identify about 24 percent of the government revenue figures (a gap of JOD 89 million<sup>22</sup> ), likely due to the richest households not appearing in the survey.<sup>23</sup> We allocate the missing PIT to those households that we had found pay this tax in HEIS and the amount allocated is proportional to their income. We do not have disaggregated administrative records of PIT payers across the distribution to allocate missing taxpayers by decile or income level.

# Allocating indirect taxes: General (GST) and special (SST) sales taxes

To estimate the impact of GST and SST we match the rates to the various expenditure categories in the household survey. If an item is not specifically listed in the GST codes annex, we use a rate that applies to similar items (for instance, guavas and pomegranates are not listed in the GST code but we assign them the tax rate applicable to other fruits). If no similar items appear in the tax code, we apply the general rate of 16 percent. Because the level of disaggregation in HEIS and the GST codes is not the same, there are a few occasions where two GST categories apply to one HEIS item. In this case, we divide household expenditures equally and apply each GST rate to each half. Taxes are only calculated for items that are part of the consumption aggregate except for purchases made outside of the country, which are not taxed nationally, housing rent (actual or imputed), for which we assume a zero GST rate. Because the flow-value of durable goods is included in the consumption aggregate to estimate poverty, we also estimate the value of the tax that would be paid for this value.

The direct household burden of the tax is estimated by multiplying total household expenditures (excluding self-production and gifts<sup>24</sup> ) by the effective tax.<sup>25</sup> We make no further adjustments, for example, to account for informality or evasion. For items where GST and SST apply, we calculate each tax separately and add the totals. For GST-exempt items we calculate the indirect effect using an IO table uprated to 2016 and a cost-push model, where the higher producer prices will be pushed to consumers in the final sale price of the product. The amount of tax collected from GST and SST is scaled to match the effective tax rate in national accounts.<sup>26</sup>

# Allocating cash transfers from social assistance

In the first instance, we use the household self-reported information in HEIS about receiving NAF or cash assistance from the Ministry of Social Development (MoSD) to determine who is obtaining this benefit.<sup>27</sup> This identifies 77 percent of the households receiving NAF benefits in 2018 according to the administrative data. To assign the remaining beneficiaries from NAF, we use a simple prediction model based on

> 22 This gap is estimated with respect to the scaled budget (as a share of private consumption).

> 23 This is a common problem in surveys around the world. For example, in an earlier HEIS, every household in West Amman, an affluent neighbourhood, refused to participate (Department of Statistics, Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation and World Bank, 2012).

> 24 For non-food items, it is not possible to discriminate between the expenditure corresponding to purchases, and the estimated value of non-purchased ones. If the entirety of the item was obtained as a gift, we do not calculate any tax. If a household obtained the item with a combination of methods (purchases and gifts), we calculate the tax on the full value as if it was all purchased.

> 25 p 26 The effective tax rate is total tax collections over total private consumption. 27 mm<sup>= (NNTTppNNiip</sup> mm<sup>∗ NNppTT mmppN</sup> mm<sup>)/ (1 + NNppTT mmppN</sup> mm<sup>).</sup> We identified beneficiaries as those who reported receiving incomes from NAF or from the MoSD, which are PPppTT p<sup>NNeemmNN</sup> asked about separately in HEIS. Because MoSD operates NAF some NAF beneficiaries may consider income from NAF as MoSD payments. Moreover, MoSD did not operate other significant programs at the time.