Section 3 summarises tax and transfers policy indicators in country profiles and provides an illustration of how these profiles can be used to identify reform options for two OECD countries (Australia and Germany). It also provides a typology of tax and transfer systems, identifying four groups of countries sharing broadly similar features. The OECD Income Distribution and Poverty Database - which draws mostly on national household survey data - contains comparable cross-country information on income, public cash transfers and taxes at the household level by income decile.1 This data source is used to derive the redistributive impact of taxes and transfers and the contribution of both size and progressivity in lowering inequality.