Last week in the wake of the Paradise Papers scandal Mark Goldring explained how tax dodging deprives already deprived people of basic services like access to water, education and healthcare. But, how does tax affect human rights? Here, Alex May argues that tax dodging can also be seen as a human rights violation. What is tax dodging? Corporations and wealthy people …
Cracking down on tax dodging, cracking down on poverty
Following the ‘Paradise Papers’ leak of financial documents Mark Goldring explains why Oxfam is calling for greater tax transparency. When businesses dodge taxes the poorest people suffer the consequences: lack of funding for public services. Through Oxfam’s work fighting poverty around the world, I see the devastating impact that not having access to basic services like education, clean water and …
Tax is an attitude: not just a set of rules
A huge new leak of financial documents this week has revealed how some multinational companies secretly make use of tax havens. FTSE 100 energy company SSE believes it should be the norm to report tax payments on a country by country basis, as they already do. Here Alistair Phillips-Davies, SSE’s Chief Executive, explains why paying taxes matters to them. SSE …
Taxation conversation over the airways
Based on conversations with those involved, Sue Moore reflects on a recent programme to encourage discussion on how the government spends taxes in Kenya and improve understanding of tax compliance behaviour. Tax is a hot topic for Kenyans with many public conversations around how the government raises and spends this revenue. Kenya’s constitution recognises the right to public participation in …
One year on from the Panama Papers: how well is the UK tackling tax avoidance?
One year on from the leaking of the Panama Papers, Oli Pearce, Policy Manager at Oxfam GB, explores how well the UK is dealing with tax avoidance. If a week was a long time in Harold Wilson’s politics, then a year in the era of Trump’s tweets is something else. The election of Donald Trump to the American presidency and …
Extreme inequality and the push for an alternative future
Deborah Hardoon introduces our new report, ‘An Economy for the 99%‘ and argues that extreme inequality and a crisis in economics have created the appetite for an alternative vision for the future. erd Alert. As a student of economics, I always found the technical aspects of the subject deeply satisfying. Getting to the ‘right’ answer using algebra and statistics, solving …
Fighting inequality through tax and budget work
Today Oxfam and its partners releases the Fiscal Justice Global Track Record, a report on advancing rights through tax and budget work. Below are several commentaries from Oxfam staff highlighting the importance of tackling injustice through tax and introduce our new programme FAIR – Fiscal Accountability for Inequality Reduction. n Vietnam we are monitoring and influencing how tax money is raised, who pays …
Tax transparency and the developing world
This blog lays out how the global corporate tax system affects the developing world and why ActionAid, Christian Aid and Oxfam are calling for change in their recent paper, Getting to Good: Towards Responsible Corporate Tax Behaviour. ver a number of years, ActionAid, Christian Aid and Oxfam have been campaigning for reform of the global corporate tax system. We do …
Addressing equity through taxation: A view from Kenya
Tax revenue is a vital source of funding for essential services such as infrastructure, health and education. In Kenya tax revenue has increased in recent years but Martin Napisa, from the Kenyan National Taxpayers Association argues that action should be taken to make the tax system more effective and fair. n recent years, the icy state of the world economy …
Fortunes for the fortunate – all 62 of them
The gap between the richest and the poorest in the world is growing at an alarming rate. In the run up to the World Economic Forum Deborah Hardoon, Deputy Head of Research, introduces Oxfam’s latest inequality data and shares her personal reflections from two years of work on these shocking statistics. wo years ago, Oxfam made headlines when we crunched …