There was much excitement (including on this blog) when the World Bank announced this April that it was changing how it scored countries in its controversial Doing Business publication. But the Bank’s 2010 edition of this report shows how hard it is for a leopard to change its spots.

Trade unionists, tax justice activists and others – including the influential chair of the House Financial Services Committee in Washington – had long complained that the Bank praised governments which cut taxes and allowed companies to reduce worker protection. In response to these concerns, and the threat of reduced US government funding the Bank appeared to have eaten humble pie, altered its approach and even asked the leading light behind the report to have resigned.

Six months later the new Bank report shows that in fact very little has changed. Singapore is again top of the Bank's rankings, and other countries such as Georgia are praised and given a better ranking for abolishing their social taxes. Belarus gets a good score for making it easier to fire people. Conversely, as the International Trades Union Congress points out, Cambodia said to be “making it more difficult to do business” because it introduced a social security contribution.

Everyone is said to be concerned about tax systems these days, with World Bank Managing Director (and former Nigerian finance minister) Ngozi Ikonjo-Iweala telling a conference in DC this week “we must hit financial centres very hard … we need to hit Dubai and Jersey and Switzerland hard - this is the future of development”, according to Richard Murphy’s blog report. Why is her World Bank then still endorsing these jurisdictions by placing them at 33, 21 and 5 (the UK) respectively in the Doing Business ranking?

Martin Hearson, one of ActionAid’s team working on tax evasion and capital flight, looked into the methodology of the Bank's 2010 report (PDF). In an e-mail last week he concluded that the Bank’s “Paying Taxes index still includes the total tax rate - rumours of its death were maybe a little exaggerated!” In other words the less tax business pays the better, as far as the Bank’s concerned.

The World Bank has prided itself over the last decade or so in becoming seen as a “knowledge bank”. Many newspapers and officials cheerful cite the Bank’s work as if it is the gospel truth. But that’s not the view of many researchers, such as Christian von Drachenfels of the German Development Institute. He and colleagues last year published Seven Theses on Doing Business (PDF), none of them complementary. In sum they argue: “the reports basically advocate for minimum regulation. This perspective largely neglects the economic and social benefits of regulation”.

At a time when every world leader is preaching the virtues of regulation the Bank risks being seen as dangerously out of step. And next year’s IDA funding round for the Bank is not likely to be easy post-crisis and with competition to stump up on climate change. Perhaps the Bank was calculating that Barney Frank and other legislators are now too worried about their own national financial regulation debates to bother about this report again. We’ll see.

If your views on business taxation differ from those of the Bank why not broadcast them on the interactive Outlandish Revenue Service website created by ActionAid.