Mr. Chair, in a broad sense, yes.
What I get from my counterparts are a lot of the same issues we're dealing with. Some countries are in a better place and others are in a worse place, but generally we're dealing with the same issues, such as the debt. This is particularly for tax administrations. It's not to the same extent as Canada, but they were also involved in delivering benefits through the pandemic. Now everybody is dealing with fallout from that.
I would say that some of the partners I talk to are very interested in the issue. How do we get compliance? We often talk about “taxes just happening”. How do we make compliance by design, or build it into the system so compliance can be there? In extreme cases, a number of countries have automatic filing where they just fill out the tax form for the person. That's more in the individual space than corporate. Only if the person has a dispute would they have to do anything. Otherwise, they just sign it and that's it. It's a very streamlined process. Now, you need a simple tax system to do that. You can't do it in a complicated way.
Yes, all of the countries are trying to find ways of dealing better with people to make it easier for them to file—to make compliance a much easier process, rather than a confusing one.
Now, for businesses, it's the same thing. We have liaison programs. We try to educate businesses to make it easier. You get people who don't want to comply, even if you make it easy, so we have to make sure we have good enforcement to deal with those.