Michelle Harding Senior Tax Economist, Head of the Tax Data and Statistical Analysis Unit Centre for Tax Policy and Administration

Michelle Harding is a senior economist and Head of the Tax Data and Statistical Analysis Unit at the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration. She is responsible for the production of the organisation’s flagship tax publications –OECD Revenue Statistics and OECD Taxing Wages – and the on-line presentation and analysis of the statistical information. She also leads the ongoing work to extend of Revenue Statistics to include countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Michelle’s earlier work at the OECD focussed on environmental taxation and climate change, including the taxation of energy. She was a co-author of Taxing Energy Use (OECD, 2013, 2015) and of Effective Carbon Rates (OECD, 2016). In 2015, she led the G20 work on the taxation of SMEs, publishing a comprehensive overview of SME taxation in 39 OECD and G20 countries. Michelle has also published working papers on taxation of dividends, capital gains and interest income, company car taxation, and the taxation of transport fuels in OECD countries.

Prior to her work at the OECD, Michelle worked at the New Zealand Treasury, most recently in the Tax Strategy team. In this team, she contributed to the significant overhaul of the New Zealand tax system in 2010, with responsibility for fiscal and distributional analysis of company tax, VAT and savings tax policy changes. In 2009, Michelle was a member of New Zealand’s government-appointed Tax Working Group and an author of its final report, which was instrumental in shaping the 2010 reforms. Earlier roles at the Treasury were in teams working on indigenous issues, fiscal management and budget processes, and machinery of government issues. Michelle has degrees in both law and economics from the University of Waikato and from Victoria University of Wellington, and is a barrister and solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand.

 

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