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A People’s Manifesto:
Tax the Rich, Not the Poor!
Make Taxes Work for People and the Planet!
21 January 2022
We, as members of civil society and mass organizations from different countries in Asia and other regions, come together in recognition of the urgency of transforming our tax and fiscal systems to make them ‘work for people and the planet.’ These have to be reoriented to turn away from blind subservience to corporate, profit-driven interests and towards the peoples’ agenda for economic justice and social transformation. At a critical time when tax revenues are gravely needed to fund essential public services and meet sustainable development targets, anti-poor tax policies and illicit financial flows have only deepened widespread inequalities within and among countries in the world
Tax the Rich, Not the Poor, and Build People's Recovery!
Global Protest to Fight Inequality 2022
On January 15-22, 2022, we join movements, people’s organizations and CSOs in over 30 countries around the world in the Fight Inequality Alliance (FIA) for a week of protest actions, demanding governments to Tax the Rich, Not the poor, and Build peoples’ Recovery! The Global Protest aims to demonstrate and strengthen our unity and draw attention to people’s demands to end inequalities everywhere.
The Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) enjoins members and partners in Asia to organize actions and activities around our common theme, and during the following dates:
• January 19: Asian Day of Protest to Fight Inequality where mobilizations and marches will take place
in cities and communities where it is safe and possible; and
• January 15-22: Week-long actions, including virtual media conferences and social media campaigns to call greater attention to issues of inequality in national and international media.
Tags are the following: inequality, APMDD, tax the rich, VAT, GST, Tax the Rich, Not the Poor, Build Peoples’ Recovery, Global Protest to Fight Inequality, Asian Day of Protest to Fight Inequality
Buwisan ang Mayaman, Hindi ang Mahirap! Isulong ang Pagbangon ng Sambayanan!
Nagbibingi-bingihan sa panaghoy ng mamamayang lugmok sa patung-patong na krisis ang mga gobyernong nakikinig lamang sa kapritso ng mga naghaharing-uri at mga korporasyong ganid sa yaman at tubo.
Kakarampot na nga ang mga programang inilunsad upang tugunan ang gutom, kawalan ng lupa, bahay at trabaho, karahasan at kawalang seguridad, kadalasan pang kapos at kulang sa pondo ang mga ito.
A victory for India's farmers, a victory for all!
Building our Collective Power for Immediate and Long-term Change: An Urgent Call to Scale Up in Scope, Speed and Intensity*
Lidy Nacpil, APMDD Coordinator
COVID19 brought staggering challenges to survival to people everywhere, most of whom have already been dealing with economic precariousness, impacts of an escalating climate crisis, and violence in many forms. This is especially true for women, for people of color, for indigenous peoples, migrants, farmers, workers and others who have had to grapple with additional layers of discrimination and marginalization.
To the participants of the 2021 Finance in Common Summit: move from commitments to action!
As a key milestone to COP 26 and avowed supporter of common action for climate, biodiversity and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the #FinanceinCommonSummit2021 must ensure that public development banks and the governments that control them must commit to take bold, rapid and concrete steps in the right direction to address the multiple crises that the world, especially the Global South, continue to face.
We reiterate our calls to
-End public financing of fossil fuels now!
-Stop public financing of industrialized agricultural systems!
-Cancel unsustainable and illegitimate debts of developing countries!
Read our statement: CLICK HERE
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An Open Letter to Asian Governments:
Reject the Tax Deal of the Rich
As peoples and organizations committed to the transparent, accountable, and just restructuring of tax systems, we call on governments to take urgent measures to make tax and fiscal policies more responsive to the needs of people and the planet and reject policies and initiatives that will exacerbate inequalities within countries and across countries such as the OECD-G7-G20 Tax Deal.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on our citizens present a historic opportunity to transform tax systems. Given the urgency of providing solutions to these pressing needs, it is lamentable that proposals by the world’s richest nations fail to address fundamental inequities in our global tax architecture.
Tax "Deal of the Rich" will not benefit the
Developing Countries
The COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts present a historical opportunity to reform global corporate taxation and transform our tax systems to make them more responsive to the needs of people and the planet. It is unconscionable that the solutions offered by the world’s elite countries only serve to reinforce inequalities in the global tax regime that have long excluded the voice and interests of developing countries and peoples in the Global South.
The Global Alliance for Tax Justice and many in the tax justice movement were critical regarding the leadership role of the OECD, which is a club of the rich, to reform international tax rules. To give its leadership the veil of legitimacy it created an Inclusive Framework (IF), which has so far barely gone beyond rubber stamping the Group of Seven (G7) “deal of the rich”. The proposals in the OECD-led Inclusive Framework’s statement on July 1 for new global tax rules, do not address the fundamental problems of the current international tax architecture. It is designed to accommodate the recent deal of the G7 on a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15%, and disregards the suggestions, proposals and reservations that a number of developing countries have put forward throughout many years of work.
DAY OF ACTION FOR TAX JUSTICE
With the rubber stamp of the G7 and the G20’s finance ministers earlier this year, the world’s wealthiest countries are doubling down on efforts to enact an inequitable and undemocratic tax deal for all countries to adopt. It is imperative for civil society organizations and governments to strongly reject this “tax deal of the rich” and rebuild our broken tax and fiscal systems to make them work for people and the planet. This can only be done under the auspices of genuinely inclusive, democratic, transparent, accountable and transformative governance mechanisms.
STATEMENT:
Asian Civil Society Organizations Call
to Reject the OECD/G20 Global Tax Deal
Amidst the multiple crises in health, the economy, and the climate, peoples in Asia continue to bear
the social and economic costs of fundamental flaws in national and international tax systems.
Illicit financial flows continue to strip away potential revenues critical for financing health and social services most needed for our survival, safety, healing and rebuilding. Tax competition, wide-ranging corporate tax incentives, and barriers to taxation of extractives and digital services remain rife
in the region. The escalating race to the bottom in corporate income tax regimes combined
with corruption, weak transparency frameworks and regulatory mechanisms have enabled
multinational corporations and domestic elites to siphon hundreds of billions out of our countries.
On July 10 2021, the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors concluded their third meeting with a resounding endorsement of the unambitious and undemocratic two-pillar solution of the G7 and the OECD. The G20 endorsement is the latest rubber stamp to the agenda dominated and led by the Global North to redefine global tax rules exclusively for their own benefit. While painting the illusion of plugging foregone revenues, the G20 and the OECD’S two-pillar proposal is a false solution that opens more loopholes for tax abuses than it closes. The consequence of the OECD/G20 agreement is strikingly simple – it undermines the calls of peoples from the Global South for a comprehensive, democratic, and just system of global corporate taxation.
Briefs on Energy and Energy Finance
of Selected Asian Countries
The G7 Summit will be held this weekend
- a regular meeting of the governments
of the richest, industrialized countries
in the world - the US, UK, Germany,
France, Italy, Canada and Japan.
This year’s meeting’s supposed objective
is “to unite leading democracies to help
the world build back better from
the COVID-19 pandemic and create
a greener, more prosperous future.”
Press Release:Asian Movements and Citizens Groups Reject “Inequitable, Undemocratic”
15% G7 Global Tax Deal
As the G7 Finance Ministers’ Meeting in London concluded with exalted acclaim from its member
states on the “groundbreaking overhaul”
of global tax rules, movements raised alarm bells against the impact of the G7 commitment
to a 15% minimum global corporate tax rate.
Finance Ministers of the Group of 7 (G7) –
composed of Canada, France, Germany, Italy,
Japan, the United Kingdom and the United
States – meet annually ahead of the G7 Summit attended by heads of state.
SEE MORE
Statement on the Israeli invasion
of Gaza and the Israel-Hamas Truce
The Asian Peoples’ Movement
on Debt and Development
welcomes the ceasefire between Israel
and Hamas after 11 days of fierce fighting,
the most intense conflict between
the two parties since 2014.
The ceasefire provides relief from military
violence and better conditions to ensure
that humanitarian assistance is delivered
to the affected communities.
But the roots of the conflict run deep –
for so long as the root causes
are not addressed, peace for the people
of Palestine remains fragile if not elusive.
SEE MORE
Following the IFF TrailThe report of the High-Level Panel
on International Financial
Accountability, Transparency
and Integrity for Achieving
the 2030 Agenda or FACTI Panel
underscores the urgent need
to address the systemic problem
of illicit financial flows (IFF) which,
if left unabated, will continue
to widen inequalities.
The Focus of APMDD’s work
APMDD believes in social transformation that is all encompassing and interrelated:
it is economic, political, cultural and environmental and has class,ethnicity/race and gender dimensions.
As its contribution to social transformation, it will focus on:
People-Centered Development, Economic and Environmental Rights and Justice
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Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and DevelopmentAPMDD is a regional alliance of peoples’ movements, community organizations, coalitions, NGOs and networks. APMDD believes in social transformation that is all encompassing and interrelated: it is economic, political, cultural and environmental and has class, ethnicity/race and gender dimensions. |
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