The assessment and monitoring of the effects of various tax reforms in Member States has become a key policy concern in the Community. In the Presidency Conclusions of the Lisbon European Council on 23-24 March 2000, the European Council requested the Council and the Commission to assess "the contribution of public finances to growth and employment, and assessing, on the basis of comparable data and indicators, whether adequate concrete measures are being taken in order to … alleviate the tax pressure on labour...". Such an evaluation needs an accurate, timely and comparable system of tax indicators enabling the Commission and the Council to quantify the early impact of tax reforms on the tax rates on labour, capital and consumption.

This paper presents a proposal for such a system, discusses its properties and compares it with other available sets of tax rates.