"The deep health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic is now finally abating but it will have important repercussions on the EU economies and their public finances that are still hard to fully delineate. As the report goes to print, evidence regarding the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are just starting to show and ‘hard data' is mostly unavailable. This, plus the difficulty in
forecasting with certainty the recent past or near-future developments in tax revenues or expenditure trends, means that this report reflects mainly the pre-COVID-19 picture, presenting mostly data from 2018 and some from 2019. As such, the report will be an important reference as to how EU economies were performing prior to the ongoing crisis and thus how this could help them going forward. We will certainly monitor closely the extent to which the pandemic may have impacted on tax revenues and expenditure and the changes it may have brought to Member States' tax-system design. As in previous editions, the 2020 Taxation Trends in the European Union report is based upon harmonised and comparable taxation data from the national statistical institutes, transmitted to and validated by Eurostat. It draws upon government finance statistics as well as the more detailed national tax lists for each country. These data are compiled in accordance with the harmonised European system of integrated economic accounts 2010 (ESA 2010)."

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