In the 2002 OECD National Accounts Expert Meeting, a member country raised the issue of the
contradiction in the SNA classification of taxes on holding gains: taxes on holding gains are deducted from
income while the tax base (the realized holding gains) is not included in the SNA definition of income.
The issue was forwarded to the ISWGNA which included it in the list of issues for possible revision of the
SNA and asked the OECD to moderate the discussion and propose, if necessary, changes in the next
edition of the SNA.
The OECD prepared a full discussion paper and designed a questionnaire to obtain the opinion of its 30
member countries. Twenty five countries responded to the questionnaire out of the 30 OECD member
countries. Three international organizations (IMF, Eurostat, and OECD) also expressed their views.