Policy Tracker

The Policy Tracker by Tax Justice Network and Datastory tracks tax policies worldwide, fostering transparency and advancing fairer tax systems.

Client: Tax Justice Network (TJN)
Solution: Data hub
Sector: Nonprofit

The challenge

Tax systems biased in favor of the wealthy fuel inequality and corruption and weaken democratic values. The Tax Justice Network wanted to make tax and financial systems more transparent, and to show clearly which countries are leading the way towards fairer tax policy and which are blocking change.

Value delivered

The Policy Tracker grades how far every country has come in implementing key tax justice policies and tracks its public position on each. Its visual map makes global tax dynamics easy to understand and share, and it has become a popular resource for advocacy and policy influence.

Background

The Tax Justice Network had built data tools and websites internally before, but with the Policy Tracker it wanted to build something next level.

The tracker had to cover more than 200 countries and territories, evaluate each one against more than 100 questions, and stay transparent about its data, with all metadata public and a way for users to give feedback.

Solution

Datastory and the Tax Justice Network created the Policy Tracker, an interactive website that grades each country from A+ to F on how fully its laws implement each policy, and tracks its public stance from Leader to Blocker.

The tracker launched in beta in November 2023 with one live-tracked policy, a UN tax convention, because that was the critical question facing policymakers at the time. The rest of its nine policies are being added gradually, following a published timeline.

A profile for every country

Every country and territory has a profile showing its grade and position on each tracked policy. The positions are based on the statements, commitments and votes of the country's government, so visitors can see what lies behind each one.

A profile for every policy

Each of the nine policies has a page of its own that explains what the policy is and why it matters. Where data has been collected, a summary shows how many countries hold each position, from Leader to Blocker, or get each grade, with the global median marked.

Insight cards show the most frequent position or grade in each region, the data coverage and the latest event, and a hexagon map shows every country at a glance. A timeline traces the global progress on the policy, such as the steps towards a UN tax convention since 2001.

How many countries hold each position on a UN tax convention, from 78 leaders to 9 blockers, with the global median at opposer

The most frequent position on a UN tax convention in each region, from leader in Africa to blocker in Northern America

The global progress timeline for a UN tax convention, from the Zedillo Report in 2001 to the Addis Ababa summit in 2015

A hexagon map of the world with every country colored by its position on a UN tax convention

Technology

Versioned data in Data Manager

The answers behind the grades and positions come from the Tax Justice Network's research, a large share of it from its Financial Secrecy Index and Corporate Tax Haven Index. Datastory ingested the data into Data Manager and modeled it as countries and territories, grades, positions and timeline events, which every page of the tracker reads from.

Every data release is kept as a version of its own. Visitors can switch between versions going back to December 2022 to see where countries stood at each point, and a new release can be published without replacing the old ones.

Transparent by design

All metadata is displayed publicly, and users are invited to give feedback on the data. That keeps the grades open to scrutiny and helps the Tax Justice Network respond faster to regulatory changes.

Built to grow

The site is structured around policies, so new ones can be added as their data is ready, following the published launch timeline.

Results

“The Tax Justice Network chose to work with Datastory because we knew nobody else would come close to Datastory's ability to take complex, overwhelming data and masterfully transform it into something beautiful, simple and accessible. We've built data tools and websites internally in the past, but with our Policy Tracker we wanted to build something next level. We were confident that Datastory would be able to grasp what we want to achieve with our data and design next level solutions beyond what we could have imagined. Datastory has more than lived up to our expectations, and the team has been a delight to work with. We're thrilled about the Policy Tracker they have developed for us and can't wait to share it publicly.”

Mark Bou MansourHead of Communications, Tax Justice Network

The Policy Tracker has become an indispensable tool for tax justice advocacy. Its visual, user-friendly map communicates complex global tax dynamics and has made it a popular resource on social media.

At launch, ahead of the UN vote on a tax convention, the tracker showed that 60 percent of countries had publicly voiced support for one, a figure the Tax Justice Network led with in its press work.

Notably, the tracker played a pivotal role in encouraging Caribbean nations to support a UN Tax Convention, showing its impact on international tax policy.

Visit the Policy Tracker