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Share of central government spending funded by taxes

What you should know about this indicator

  • This indicator measures the share of spending that is covered by domestic tax revenue.
  • Government expenditures refer to the budgetary central government. These are all institutions that are directly financed through the main central government budget, such as the core ministries, departments and agencies.
  • This indicator does not include other sources of government revenue, such as grants, loans, fines, penalties, and most social security contributions.

How is this data described by its producer?

Proportion of domestic budgetary central government expenditure funded by taxes (%)

Definition:

Budgetary central government is an institutional unit of the general government sector particularly important in terms of size and power, particularly the power to exercise control over many other units and entities.

The budgetary central government is often a single unit of the central government that encompasses the fundamental activities of the national executive, legislative, and judiciary powers. This component of general government is usually covered by the main (or general) budget.

The budgetary central government’s revenue (and expense) are normally regulated and controlled by a ministry of finance, or its functional equivalent, by means of a budget approved by the legislature.

Most of the ministries, departments, agencies, boards, commissions, judicial authorities, legislative bodies, and other entities that make up the budgetary central government are not separate institutional units. This is because they generally do not have the authority to own assets, incur liabilities, or engage in transactions in their own right, including references to standards and classifications, preferably relying on international agreed definitions.

Further information available at: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-17-01-02.pdf

Share of central government spending funded by taxes
Spending refers to the which includes the core institutions of the national government. Funds only include taxes; Fines, penalties, and most social security contributions are excluded.
Source
International Monetary Fund – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 29, 2025
Next expected update
October 2027
Date range
2000–2023
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

International Monetary Fund – IMF

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) dataset is the primary collection of data tracking progress towards the SDG indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources.

Retrieved on
October 29, 2025
Retrieved from
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/dataportal
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Monetary Fund via UN SDG Indicators Database (https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/dataportal), UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (accessed 2025). More information available at: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-17-01-02.pdf.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) dataset is the primary collection of data tracking progress towards the SDG indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources.

Retrieved on
October 29, 2025
Retrieved from
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/dataportal
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Monetary Fund via UN SDG Indicators Database (https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/dataportal), UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (accessed 2025). More information available at: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-17-01-02.pdf.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

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  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of central government spending funded by taxes”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Bertha Rohenkohl, Pablo Arriagada, and Max Roser (2016) - “Government Spending”. Data adapted from International Monetary Fund. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260518-095641/grapher/share-of-central-government-expenditures-funded-by-taxes.html [online resource] (archived on May 18, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

International Monetary Fund – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

International Monetary Fund – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Share of central government spending funded by taxes” [dataset]. International Monetary Fund, “IMF” [original data]. Retrieved May 18, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260518-095641/grapher/share-of-central-government-expenditures-funded-by-taxes.html (archived on May 18, 2026).

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