Solidarity with the APMDD’s Day of Action for Tax Justice

Solidarity with the APMDD’s Day of Action for Tax Justice

AIDC Statement in solidarity with the APMDD’s Day of Action for Tax Justice | 23 September 2021

The past two years have fully exposed the disparities and injustice built into the global economic system. While the pandemic has forced governments across the Global South to take on increasing debt and in turn enact brutal austerity measures, the large trans-national corporations (TNCs) dominating our economies have continued to make record profits. These TNCs routinely abuse flaws in the international economic framework and close relationships with national elites in order to send billions of dollars to tax havens every year, thereby avoiding taxation and accountability. In the end, workers and communities across the global South are the ones who bear the costs of this broken system. The struggle for economic justice is therefore a global struggle. 

Countries within the OECD, such as France and the United States, are now pushing for a set of reforms to the global tax system. The supporters of this deal claim that their proposal for a global minimum tax will rectify the inequalities and loopholes within the system. However, the details of their proposal show that this deal is little more than a missed opportunity. The OECD proposals are not only too modest to address the challenge of curbing corporate impunity, but they are also designed to redirect all the benefit to the OECD countries where TNCs are based, in turn reinforcing global inequality rather than challenging it. 

In recognition of the above, the AIDC therefore stands in solidarity with today’s Day of Action for Tax Justice organized by the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD). Today, progressive popular movements and organisation across Asia will come together to demand a truly just transformation of the global economic framework – one that will reduce inequality and injustice rather than perpetuate it.

The key demands on this Day of Action are for Asian governments to: 

“ADOPT tax and fiscal policies that truly respond to the needs of people and the planet, reduce unjust tax burdens on people, fairly tax the wealth of elites and corporations, and that serve to reduce inequalities and enable the realization of human rights and sustainable development.

BUILD inclusive, transformative and sustainable economies that genuinely serve the needs, interests, and futures of people and the planet.

REJECT the OECD/G20 global tax deal and other initiatives that reinforce inequalities in decision-making around global tax rules or serve only the interests of multinational corporations and a few elite countries.

END the global race to the bottom of corporate tax rates , stop illicit financial flows, and fight for a more equitable distribution of taxing rights;

PUSH TOWARDS the formation of a genuinely inclusive, democratic, and transparent

intergovernmental Tax Body under the auspices of the United Nations.”

For more information as well as statements to endorse, see:

APMDD Day of Action for Tax Justice

GATJ: The “Deal of the Rich” will not benefit developing countries

African Civil Society Organizations Call for Rejection of G7 Global Tax Deal