The update helps tax administrations assess their maturity, support strategic discussions, compare anonymised peer data via a heat map, and connect with advanced-practice peers through OECD-facilitated consent.
The OECD’s Forum on Tax Administration released the 2025 edition of its Tax Debt Management Maturity Model on 18 September 2025.
Maturity models are a relatively common tool, often used on a self-assessment basis, to help organisations understand their current level of capability in a particular functional, strategic or organisational area. In addition, maturity models, through the setting out of different levels and descriptors of maturity, are intended to provide a common understanding of the type of changes that would be likely to enable an organisation to reach a higher level of maturity over time should it so wish.
The OECD Forum on Tax Administration (FTA) first developed a maturity model in 2016 in order to assess digital maturity in the two areas of natural systems/portals and big data. The digital maturity model was introduced in the OECD report Technologies for Better Tax Administration.
Building on this, work began in 2018 to develop a set of stand-alone maturity models over time covering both functional areas of tax administration, such as tax debt management, enterprise risk management, analytics and the digital transformation maturity model.
This maturity model, developed by the OECD FTA’s informal Tax Debt Management Network (TDMN), is an update of the 2019 Tax Debt Management Maturity Model (TDMM). The 2019 version was the first in a series of maturity models developed by the FTA over recent years. It was completed by 21 administrations and has also been used in individual capacity building assistance in a number of cases. Subsequent maturity models, which were produced by the FTA have moved away from the length and detail of the TDMM, taking out areas which will generally be the responsibility of other functions. This appears to have been a factor in the models having been used by more jurisdictions. For example, the Digital Transformation Maturity Model has been completed by over 60 administrations.
The decision was therefore taken by the TDMN to revise the model by shortening it and focusing more on the core elements of successful tax debt management. The aim is to make the model easier to use which hopefully will increase the use of the model and help to build up a better global picture of maturity in tax debt management. This picture can be useful to administrations in considering their own future reforms and also in identifying where future collaborative work, including capacity building, might be of most value. The aim of the tax debt management maturity model (TDMM) is:
To allow tax administrations to self-assess through internal discussions as to where they see themselves as regards maturity in their practices and processes for effective and efficient tax debt management.
To provide senior leadership of the tax administration with a good oversight of the level of maturity based on input from other stakeholders across the organisation. This can help in deciding strategy and identifying areas for further improvement, including where that needs to be supported by the actions of other parts of the tax administration.
To allow tax administrations to compare where they sit compared to their peers. The published version of the TDMM will provide an analysis, on an anonymised basis, of the self-assessments of the model that are reported to the Secretariat. This will include the use of a “heat map” to show the reported maturity of different administrations against the elements of the TDMM. While the heat map is fully anonymised, if a jurisdiction wishes to be put in touch with a jurisdiction which it thinks might have interesting approaches to learn from (for example, those self-assessed at the leading or aspirational levels), then they can approach the Secretariat. The Secretariat will then contact the jurisdiction concerned and ask if they are willing to be put in touch with the requesting jurisdiction.
