The ‘doing business’ report for 2018 showed the central American nation had climbed to 73rd place in the world.

The Russell Bedford accountancy network has hailed El Salvador the “stand-out tax reformer” of the year.

One of the organisation’s members, Cornejo & Umaña, assists the World Bank in its ‘paying taxes’ survey.

The network said the country’s achievement was down to its “outstanding improvements to its fiscal regime”.

It added: “The number of submissions required have been cut from 41 to seven over the past 12 months (against an OECD average of 10.9), with the number of hours spent on tax compliance reducing from an onerous 248 per year to 180 – comparable to the average 160 hours of OECD high-income economies.”

Luis Alfredo Cornejo Martínez, managing partner at Cornejo & Umaña, said: “It is gratifying to see the country’s performance more closely aligned with that of the OECD high-income economies, both in terms of the time spent on tax compliance, and the number of submissions required. 

“And the fact that El Salvador’s total tax take – at 35.5% of profits – is now lower than the OECD’s 40.1 percent testifies to the country’s ever-improving competitiveness.”

Last year’s best performing countries, New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark retain their top spots while the greatest progress among emerging markets were found in Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Angola and India up 81, 60, 54 and 53 places, respectively. 

Italy shows the best performance of OECD high-income economies, moving from 126 to 112, while the United Kingdom recorded its worst performance in recent years, down 13 places from 10 to 23.