Social NGOs take on the fight for tax justice

Blog post by Gilberto Pelosi (Policy & Advocacy Officer, Social Platform) and Mary Collins (Senior Policy & Advocacy Coordinator, European Women’s Lobby).

On 16 and 17 February, we participated in a training session on the role of civil society in tackling tax avoidance. It was organised by the European Commission as part of its ongoing project to expand civil society’s involvement in the campaign for fairer taxation.

The course, delivered by professional and committed trainers from the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD) – a long-established Amsterdam-based organisation specialised in research and training on cross-border taxation – proved to be an excellent introduction to a very technical matter.

Focusing on company and corporate taxation, it allowed participants to develop a sound knowledge of current trends in international and European Union corporate tax issues and to deepen our understanding of the differences between tax avoidance – which is aggressive tax planning and harmful practices that exploit existing legal loopholes and differences between national tax systems to avoid tax payment – and tax evasion – i.e. tax fraud and non-payment of taxes. We discussed the implications of tax avoidance and evasion on our societies, and critically assessed some of the policy measures put forward by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the EU to deal with these issues.

It was also an excellent opportunity to network, connect and exchange views with other (EU and national) civil society organisations, journalists, business representatives and EU officials.

Taxation has a fundamental role to play in our fight for social justice and a just economy: it has a social, gender and generational dimension, and serves two purposes. Firstly, it is the main way in which our governments collect revenue to adequately and sustainably finance social protection systems and the public services we all benefit from. Secondly, it is a fundamental tool to redistribute income and wealth more fairly within our societies and thereby reduce social inequalities.

That is why at Social Platform, together with the European Women’s Lobby and our other members, we have decided to make tax justice a strategic priority and expand our work in this area in the coming period.

We must put an end to harmful and aggressive tax practices that are undermining the cohesion of our societies and set up more just and progressive tax systems. This entails looking at existing and new forms of taxation, including environmental, financial, wealth, property, and inheritance taxes.

Civil society can make a meaningful contribution to such a process, and we are ready to engage with all relevant stakeholders to share our values, views and goals. To make our demands more credible and our voices heard, we have to build our capacity and understanding of what is an extremely technical issue, mobilise our resources, and become more active.

Participating in one of the next sessions of this useful introductory training course is certainly an important first step towards building your organisation’s knowledge of this subject and expanding your involvement in this area. We highly recommend it! We’ll be putting out training into practice ahead of the Commission’s conference on tax justice, which is planned to take place in June.