What difference can wealth taxes make for gender justice in Asia?
This briefing explains how wealth taxes can be used as a tool to fight inequalities and achieve gender justice aims and highlights the potential impact such measures would have by pointing to examples in India and Indonesia among other Asian countries.
The Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) welcomes the support of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for calls for a UN Tax Convention, recently reiterated by Finance Ministers in Africa and by civil society organizations across the world. This is a step in the right direction towards fixing the fundamental flaws of the international tax architecture and upholds the rights of Global South countries not only to their tax and fiscal sovereignty, but also to raise revenues and rebuild economies in the face of multiple crises that have sharpened under the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, together with its members at the national level across Asia, carried out the Asia Days of Action – “Tax Justice Now for People’s Recovery” from 23 to 24 September 2022 (click here to watch a video summary).
Multisector groups from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan took part in days of action, holding seminars, protest actions, solidarity gatherings and photo actions. The groups stressed the urgency to address policies that severely undermine the capacities of people to prepare for, respond to, survive, recover, and rebuild when crisis or natural disasters strike.
Highlights in India included a workshop bringing together CSOs, domestic workers and migrant workers, a puppet show on unjust tax regimes, poster-making by children, and a ‘Ride for a Fair Tax’ that mobilised domestic workers on bicycle.
In Bangladesh, garment workers protested in front of the National Press Club, demanding an end to VAT.
In Pakistan, the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum organised a rally against injustices in the tax system in Pakistan, and a seminar was held to discuss the need for taxes to work for ordinary people and help deliver public services and much needed relief in light of the floods that struck Pakistan that month.
Click here to read the press release
Click here to watch a video of the Asia Days of Action for Tax Justice 2021
The Asia Days of Action for Tax Justice were held last 23-24 September to amplify peoples’ demands from countries across Asia and the Global South for urgent tax justice towards ending inequalities and building genuine Peoples’ Recovery and resilience in the face of multiple crises.
This press release coincides with the launch of the Asia Days of Action on Tax Justice, and highlights actions being taken by APMDD’s partners in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines.
The statement demands changes and reforms in tax and fiscal systems, asking governments and the UN General Assembly to take action by ending unjust tax burdens on the poor, fairly and sharply taxing the wealth and income of corporations and the elite and ensuring taxes are used to meet people’s basic needs.
The multiple crises brought to the fore by the pandemic have widened inequalities that had already been present and worsening before the COVID-19 outbreak. Any serious attempt at ensuring peoples’ recovery and addressing inequalities would require bold and decisive actions that strike at the root causes of inequalities and multiple crises.
This is a second press release published by APMDD during the Asia Days of Action, focused on the role of tax systems in addressing inequalities.
On 15 September 2022, the Tax and Fiscal Justice Asia (TAFJA) network held the press conference “Tax Justice Now, For People’s Recovery” to amplify civil society calls for tax justice, especially addressing governments and the international community as the 77th UN General Assembly meets on 13-27 September 2022.
Tax justice campaigns aim to uphold peoples’ needs and rights amid deepening multiple crises. Today, the scale of the crises has most dramatically worn the face of the peoples of Asia. Tens of thousands of people have fled large parts of Pakistan badly hit by climate emergency-induced flooding. The people of Sri Lanka are suffering hunger and deprivations of basic necessities because of bankruptcy and runaway inflation resulting from “ill-conceived economic reforms like tax cuts and servicing debt payments.”
Other peoples in Asia are equally vulnerable to the impacts of crises but governments ignore peoples’ situation or, worst, resort to intimidation and repression to silence critical voices.
During the press conference, speakers discussed the flaws of tax systems that dominate the region; and the requirements of genuine people’s recovery that are severely hampered by continuing tax abuses and illicit financial flows by the elite and multinational corporations.
Speakers:
● Farooq Tariq, Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee
● Vidya Dinker, Indian Social Action Forum
● Luke Espiritu, Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (Solidarity of Filipino Workers)
● Sudhir Shrestha, South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication
● Ah Maftuchan, The Prakarsa (Welfare Initiative for Better Societies)
● Tony Salvador, Third World Network
● Dereje Alemayehu, Global Alliance for Tax Justice
● Jeannie Manipon, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development
Tax justice groups in Asia are calling for a Day of Action on Tax Justice to be staged on September 23 to demand changes and reforms on taxes and fiscal system with Jeannie Manipon of The Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) saying that “national tax systems are biased in favor of MNCs and the elites. We can also see the similar pattern in the international tax system”, emphasizing that a progressive mechanism must be put in place in order to allow the removal of the backwards tax and fiscal system.
In an online press conference organized by the Tax and Fiscal Justice – Asia (TAFJA), the combined and resounding messages of speakers stressed that regressive tax policies exemplified by VAT and GST impact women, workers, farmers and other marginalized sectors the most and severely undermine their capacities to prepare for, respond to, survive recover and rebuild when crisis or natural disasters strike. Regressive tax systems, with their elite and gender biases are legacies of colonialism, part of systems that enable countries of the Global North to extract wealth from the Global South.
“A wealth tax is a potent tool for equality and justice…. Groups based in the Philippines calling for a wealth tax are advocating for one of the most direct ways to stem inequality by reversing the highly regressive tax system that governments across Asia have long depended on to sustain basic public services. Regressive taxes such as Value-Added Tax (VAT) and excise taxes have long been known to hit those with smaller incomes harder, and have thus helped to widen the gap between poor and rich, women and men, marginalized sectors and influential elites.”
The Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development held a webinar on 24 August 2022, attended by nearly 300 people to release the findings of the study it commissioned recently on “Inequality, Tax Justice and the Philippine Wealth Tax Campaign”. A press release was issued on the same day, making an appeal for the use of a wealth tax in the Philippines and across Asia. Read more here.
Organised by APMDD, the webinar was co-hosted by the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP), and the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies. Leaders and members of grassroots organizations from various sectors introduced the concept of, and rationale for, a wealth tax as a domestic resource mobilization mechanism for social and economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as for climate change adaptation.
