Field Guide
Purpose of the Field Guide
The purpose is to:
- Provide trained assessors with a structured methodology—the Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool (TADAT)—to undertake an objective performance assessment of a country’s tax administration system.
- Establish a set of quality standards to be applied in conducting an assessment and preparing a PAR.
- Ensure consistency of approach amongst assessors.
Structure of the Field Guide
The field guide is structured around the nine POAs comprising the TADAT framework. A separate section is devoted to each POA—see sections III to XI—and includes:
- A short statement of the desired performance outcome and description of what represents international good practice.
- A summary of the indicators, measures, and scoring methods used to assess performance.
- A detailed checklist of questions to guide TADAT assessors in their field enquiries. The checklist is not intended to be exhaustive; there will be occasions where assessors, using their professional skill and judgment, need to probe further and ask additional questions to assess a particular performance indicator.
- Examples of evidence to be gathered by assessors during preparation and fieldwork, given that TADAT assessments are evidence based (i.e. assessed scores must be based in fact and supported by documentary or other evidence, including administrative policy documents, procedural manuals, numerical data extracted from the tax administration’s management information system, and observations by TADAT assessors of work processes and procedures in operation).
- A detailed performance measurement framework in the form of a matrix showing, for each indicator and measurement dimension, the criteria to be applied in determining a performance score. As with the checklist of questions, assessors will need to exercise professional judgment in applying the performance measurement framework; inevitably there will be situations that do not align precisely with the stated criteria, thereby requiring judgment in determining an appropriate performance score.
- Finally, appendixes to the field guide provide: (1) a glossary of terms; (2) a questionnaire to be sent to the client country in advance of the assessment team’s fieldwork; (3) a suggested work schedule to be used by the assessment team in the field; (4) a template of the PAR to be prepared once the assessment of all POAs is complete; (5) a template for country evaluation of the assessment team; (6) a template for evaluating assessment team members; and (7) a description of the quality review process for PARs.
