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	A human-centred recovery from the pandemic needs employment and social protection by UN Conference on Trade and Development   Oct. 2021 (UN News)   UN Secretary-General calls for accelerated action on jobs and social protection to avoid an uneven global recovery and prevent future crises.   Deeply diverging recoveries will undermine trust and solidarity and make the world more vulnerable to future crises, including climate change.   Investing in job-rich growth, social protection and a just transition to a net-zero emissions future, particularly in low -and middle-income countries, could prevent a further deepening of the inequalities between developed and developing economies that have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, said UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, in a policy brief issued today.   At least US$982 billion in fiscal stimulus measures is needed to respond to the immediate labour market shocks of the crisis and to support a just transition, as well as US$ 1.2 trillion annually for social protection floors in low- and middle-income countries.   No advanced economy has achieved economic and social progress without investing in social protection systems and quality public services that provide people with the necessary support to navigate the vicissitudes of their lives.   While the wealth of billionaires increased by over US$ 3.9 trillion between March and December 2020, the impact of the pandemic on the world of work, among other factors, increased the number of extremely poor by between 119 and 224 million people—the first increase in poverty in over 21 years.   An estimated 8.8 percent of total working hours – equivalent to the hours worked in one year by 255 million full-time workers – were lost in 2020. This corresponds to a loss of US$3.3 trillion in labour income before government support.   Because of the pandemic, there are an estimated 75 million fewer jobs in 2021 than there were before the crisis, and 23 million fewer projected in 2022.   The Secretary-General’s brief calls for urgent investments in a job-rich, sustainable and socially inclusive recovery. The public and private sectors should leverage finance to significantly ramp up such investments to get the world back on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and to address ever increasing risks from climate change and environmental degradation that could jeopardize 1.2 billion jobs—equivalent to 40 percent of the global labour force.   A human-centred recovery from the pandemic needs employment and social protection policies to work in tandem, not only to improve people’s living standards, but also to help them navigate the challenges of a rapidly changing world of work and the transition towards the goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.   Accelerating job creation   To achieve a job-rich recovery and a just transition to a sustainable and inclusive economy, the Secretary-General is calling for a Global Accelerator for Jobs and Social Protection that would create at least 400 million jobs and extend social protection to 4 billion women, men and children currently without coverage.   To achieve this Goal, the Policy Brief entitled “Investing in Jobs and Social Protection for Poverty Eradication and a Sustainable Recovery” recommends several actions:   Develop integrated national and inclusive recovery strategies for decent job creation, especially in the care and green sectors, universal social protection, and a just transition, and ensure they are aligned with macro-economic and fiscal policies and underpinned by sound data.   Expand investment in Social Protection Floors as a percentage of GDP in national budgets.   Design policy measures to extend social protection to workers in the informal economy, and to foster the progressive formalization of enterprises and employment, including in the care economy.   Create active labour market policies to help workers upskill and re-skill to keep or change their job, adapt to the green and digital transitions.   Develop a sound financial architecture to mobilize investments for decent jobs, social protection, and a just transition, including by channelling SDRs to support national recovery strategies to countries in need.   Strengthen collaboration with the private sector to scale-up investments in strategic sectors to promote entrepreneurship, effectively reaching women and women-owned enterprises in particular, to close the skills gap.   Align strategies with the Paris Climate Accords, so that they support enterprises and workers, while also ensuring that vulnerable populations are not left behind in the transition to net-zero carbon emissions economies.   * Access the briefing: http://bit.ly/3AhJUqF   The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has welcomed the Global Accelerator announced by the UN Secretary-General António Guterres and its target for jobs and social protection.   The policy brief sets out a target to create at least 400 million jobs by 2030, primarily in the green and care economies, and extend social protection floors by 2025 to about four billion people currently not covered by any measures.   The Accelerator was presented during the UN’s 76th General Assembly as part of the Financing for Development in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond Initiative, a process in which the ITUC has been involved presenting recommendations on Financing Recovery and Building the Economy of the Future.   “Our demands have been heard,” said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow. “The targets of the Accelerator will help to rebuild trust and hope with working people, as it can provide concrete answers to the shocks we face today and will face in the future.”   The priorities of the Global Accelerator are at the heart of trade unions’ demands for a New Social Contract to ensure a human-centred recovery and resilience.   Sharan Burrow stressed that the resources to finance the measures in a New Social Contract do exist but are not used adequately. Five actions need to be prioritised:   The reallocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) is paramount. Out of the $650 billion in SDRs issued by the IMF, only about $275 billion will go to emerging and developing countries, and only $21 billion will go to low-income countries. Rich countries must support equity swaps.   Transparent debt relief architecture, with debt restructuring and cancellations, is needed, including middle-income countries and “positive conditionalities” based on the SDGs included in the International Financial Institutions’ lending policies.   With current liquidity injections in the developed world, official development assistance (ODA) can and should be increased to help developing countries in restoring public goods. We need to scale up and meet the ODA 0.7% commitment, with 0.15 to 0.20% of GNI for the least-developed countries. Equally, the percentage of ODA dedicated to support social protection through a Global Fund for Social Protection is central to resilience.   Stronger multilateral coordination on taxation is needed. An initial positive step by the G7 on elimination of tax evasion and on a minimum global tax rate on multinational corporations is fundamental, together with national progressive taxation systems and wealth taxes.   All investments should have an environmental, sustainability and governance lens if we are to deal with the convergence of crises threatening people and the planet.   Trade unions are ready to engage through social dialogue to translate these commitments into concrete progress towards the 2030 Agenda.   http://www.ituc-csi.org/ITUC-supports-UN-Global-Accelerator http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2021/09/un-secretary-general-calls-for-accelerated-action-on-jobs-and-social-protection-to-avoid-an-uneven-global-recovery-and-prevent-future-crises/ http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/world-social-security-report/2020-22/lang--en/index.htm http://socialprotection.org/webinar-series#african-dialogue-on-covid-19-and-the-future-of-social-protection http://cambodia.oxfam.org/latest/stories/social-protection-empowers-women http://www.srpoverty.org/2021/06/28/press-release-world-needs-to-prepare-for-next-crisis-by-setting-up-global-fund-for-social-protection-now/ http://undocs.org/A/HRC/47/36 http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/news/covid-19-a-social-protection-response/ http://www.socialprotectionfloorscoalition.org   Sep. 2021   By 2025 developing countries will be $12 trillion poorer because of the pandemic. (UNCTAD)   Shifting decisively away from four decades driven by a misplaced faith in unregulated markets, and breathing new life into multilateral cooperation, will demand additional policy transformations that go well beyond the rescue packages prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the UNCTAD Trade and Development Report 2021 released on 15 September.   To their credit, governments in advanced countries have responded to the COVID-19 shock by rediscovering the power of their purse and making resilience, rather than flexibility, the metric of recovery.   But the crisis has also revealed just how fragmented and fragile the global economy has become, and how far this policy shift must extend if the oft-repeated phrase “built back better” is to define the post-pandemic recovery.   Deprived of the policy independence and vaccines that advanced economies take for granted, many developing countries are facing a cycle of deflation and despair, with a lost decade looming.   Through 2025 developing countries will be $12 trillion poorer because of the pandemic, according to UNCTAD; on some counts the failure to roll out vaccines will, alone, knock $1.5 trillion from incomes across the South.   “The global recovery from the pandemic must reach beyond emergency spending and infrastructure investments to embrace a reinvigorated multilateral model for trade and development,” said Rebeca Grynspan, the secretary-general of UNCTAD. “Only a concerted rethinking of priorities holds out hope of addressing the inequality and climate crises that have come to define our era.”   An examination of policy actions in three key areas of resilience building – reducing inequality, countering corporate power and reducing carbon emissions – suggests that advanced economies have taken some welcome steps, but without the heft that more decisive steps and coordinated support would bring.   Back in January 1981, the recently elected US president, Ronald Reagan, promised his fellow citizens “a new beginning”. Free from government meddling and its economic afflictions, a vigorous, fairer and more productive economy would emerge. His message that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem” went global.   UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Report was launched that same year and has been tracking the impact of neo-liberal policies ever since. Much has changed, but at a fundamental level the warnings in the first report – of an uncoordinated global economy prone to shocks and crises – have withstood the test of time; with creditors favoured over debtors; large producers dominating the small; profits amassed at the expense of wages; and the interests of developed countries prioritized over those of developing countries.   “Over the past 40 years, we’ve witnessed the emergence of a full-blown rentier economy with global reach and an addiction to debt, both public and private,” said Richard Kozul-Wright, director of UNCTAD’s globalization and development strategies division.   “Not only that, inequality has become a feature of our globalized world, while concentrated private economic power erodes public authority to respond.”   Crises are, no doubt, an opportunity for change, and the last four decades have seen plenty, culminating in the 2008-09 global financial crisis. But despite the damage to employment, incomes and savings, governments failed to escape the influence of unregulated financial markets, corporate power and extremely wealthy individuals.   If the post-pandemic period sees a repeat of this failure, through a combination of fiscal tightening, watered-down labour market rules, and unequal trade and investment agreements – even as monetary policy remains loose - hopes of generating a sustained, equitable boom will surely recede rapidly.   Instead, and even without another financial crash, the global economy will remain subdued for the remainder of the decade with developing countries, particularly in Africa and South Asia, hit hardest.   Since the global financial crisis, $25 trillion has been pumped into advanced economies, making them de facto wards of their central banks. The result, prior to the pandemic, was a perverse mix of slower growth and booming financial markets. Though governments added big fiscal packages to their policy arsenal as the pandemic struck, booming financial markets will threaten the recovery if their inflation phobia outweighs pressure to support real economic activity.   As advanced economies spring back to life after extended lockdowns, the crisis may quickly lose its global designation, but that growth will only expose the lack of cohesion of the multilateral system.   The report welcomes the agreement on a $650bn SDR allocation, which will offer some relief, but this will not be enough to reverse the downward spiral in most developing countries where, austerity remains the default policy for governments under financial pressure from footloose capital and unforgiving markets.   And on the health front, the COVAX and C-TAP schemes have been unable to mobilize the requisite resources from Northern governments and corporations, many of which have, at the same time, resisted developing country calls to temporarily waive TRIPS rules in the WTO in support of local vaccine production.   UNCTAD, as it did 40 years ago, sees greater policy coordination as a prerequisite for building back better from a serious global shock. But it also sees an urgent need to build in bolder actions, together, before it is too late. The report draws several lessons from the crisis that could help strengthen the ambition of policymakers at the national and international levels:   Governments are not budget constrained in the way households are, but not all governments are created equal. Developing countries need support to expand their fiscal space.   Central banks are public institutions authorized by the state to create credit. How they use that authority should reflect public policy decisions aimed at equitable growth.   Resilience, therefore, is a public good. It can only be delivered through public investment.   Finance is too important to be left to markets: public banks and stronger regulatory oversight can deliver a healthier investment climate.   Cutting wages is bad for business and worse for society; wages are a critical source of demand, their growth can stimulate productivity and underpin a strong social contract.   A healthy economy is a diversified economy. Industrial policy matters for countries at all levels of development. The question is not if, but how.   A caring society is a more stable society and good social policy must go beyond offering a residual category of safety nets designed to stop those left behind from falling further.   http://unctad.org/news/unctad-issues-amber-warning-building-back-better http://unctad.org/news/boosting-productive-capacities-only-hope-least-developed-countries-post-covid-19-unctad-says http://www.dw.com/en/pandemic-dramatically-worsens-life-in-worlds-poorest-countries/a-59297604 http://unctad.org/webflyer/least-developed-countries-report-2021 http://unctad15.org/media-centre http://sdg.iisd.org/news/unctad-conference-calls-for-new-approaches-to-achieve-prosperity-for-all/ http://odi.org/en/events/getting-back-on-track-to-end-extreme-poverty/ http://www.wider.unu.edu/event/covid-19-and-development-effects-and-new-realities-global-south http://www.wider.unu.edu/article/unu-wider-ongoing-work-effect-covid-19-economies-states-and-societies-global-south Visit the related web page
	G20/OECD Tax deal: A lost opportunity to put an end to tax avoidance by ICRICT, Tax Justice Network, Le Monde, agencies   Nov. 2021   The State of Tax Justice 2021   Countries are losing a total of $483 billion in tax a year to global tax abuse committed by multinational corporations and wealthy individuals – enough to fully vaccinate the global population against Covid-19 more than three times over.   The 2021 edition of the State of Tax Justice documents how a small club of rich countries with de facto control over global tax rules is responsible for the majority of tax losses suffered by the rest of the world, with lower income countries hit the hardest by global tax abuse. The findings are further galvanising calls to move rule-making on international tax from the OECD to the UN.   Key findings   Countries are losing $483 billion in tax a year to global tax abuse – that’s enough to fully vaccinate the global population against Covid-19 more than three times over.   Of the $483 billion lost a year, $312 billion of this tax loss is due to cross-border corporate tax abuse by multinational corporations and $171 billion is due to offshore tax abuse by wealthy individuals.   Global tax abuse continues to hit lower income countries more severely than higher income countries. While higher income countries lose more tax in absolute number, their tax losses represent a smaller share of their revenues (9.7 per cent). Lower income countries in comparison collectively lose the equivalent of nearly half (48 per cent) of their public health budgets.   The taxes that lower income countries lose would be enough to vaccinate 60 per cent of their populations, bridging the gap in vaccination rates between lower income and higher income countries.   Key recommendations   UN tax convention. Urgent calls to shift the responsibility of setting tax rules away from the OECD to the UN. The FACTI Panel’s key recommendations draw closely on the work of the tax justice movement, and include the establishment of a UN tax convention, intergovernmental UN forum for the urgent negotiation of further changes to the international tax rules; and a Centre for Monitoring Taxing Rights at the UN to raise national accountability for illicit financial flows and tax abuse suffered by others, and a globally inclusive.   Excess profit tax. Governments must introduce an excess profit tax on multinational corporations making excess profits during the pandemic, such as global digital companies, in order to cut through profit shifting abuses.   Multinational corporations’ excess profit would be identified at the global level, not the national level, to prevent corporations from underreporting their profits by shifting them into tax havens, and taxed using a unitary tax method.   Wealth tax. Governments must introduction of a wealth tax to fund the Covid-19 response and address the long term inequalities the pandemic has exacerbated, with punitive rates for opaquely owned offshore assets and a commitment between governments to eliminate this opacity. The pandemic has already seen an explosion in the asset values of the wealthy, even as unemployment has soared to record levels in many countries.   http://taxjustice.net/reports/the-state-of-tax-justice-2021/ http://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2021/11/nearly-500-billion-lost-yearly-to-global-tax-abuse-due-mostly-to-corporations-new-analysis-says/ http://gfintegrity.org/press-release/report-finds-trade-misinvoicing-continues-to-be-a-massive-and-persistent-problem/ http://www.cesr.org/moving-towards-a-new-generation-of-guiding-principles-on-business-and-human-rights/   July 2021   Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation:   The agreement announced at the OECD Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting is a another lost opportunity to put an end to tax avoidance by multinationals and and generate revenues worldwide to support governments in their fight against the pandemic and the recovery post COVID.   The world is at a crossroads and the time to act to ensure all countries have sufficient resources to pay for public goods and to create a more resilient economy post-COVID is now.   ICRICT considers that a comprehensive reform would see ALL multinationals’ worldwide profits taxed in line with their real activities in each country - that is, by allocating global corporate profits of multinationals to different countries on a formulaic basis, according to the key factors that generate profit: employment, sales, and assets AND a 25% global effective minimum tax on multinationals, putting an end to harmful tax competition between countries and reducing the incentive for multinationals to shift profits to tax havens.   The Inclusive Framework agreement falls well short of the comprehensive reform the world needs and does not reflect the demands that developing countries have made in the past for a bigger and fairer reallocation of taxing rights for the largest and most profitable businesses and for a high global minimum tax to ensure that meaningful revenues are generated and shared fairly.   This agreement only serves the interests of a handful of countries, the richest. It is now time for the G20 countries to show real leadership and raise the ambitious of the current deal.   This requires a commitment to both introduce a much higher minimum tax, and to advocate within the Inclusive Framework for a higher share of global profits of multinationals to be reallocated using a formula, as both the Intergovernmental Group of 24 and the African Tax Administration Forum , which coordinate the positions of their members that are active in the negotiations, have been calling for.   Notes:   A global minimum tax is one of the main recommendations of the Report on Financial Integrity for Sustainable Development - presented last February by a United Nations high-level panel, the FACTI.   A global minimum tax rate close of 21% could generate $640 billion, according to a recent study on the potential revenue-raising effects of the widespread adoption of this measure.   The European Tax Observatory, run by ICRICT commissioner Gabriel Zucman, just considered several scenarios, depending on a range of rates. An international agreement on a minimum rate of 25% - as supported by ICRICT- would allow the European Union (EU) to raise its tax revenues by €170 billion in 2021, an increase of 50% of the corporate tax revenue collected today and equivalent to 12% of total EU health spending.   With a 21% minimum rate (Biden’s early proposal), the EU would collect about €100 billion more. Moving from 21% to 15% would halve these revenues (to €50 billion).   A 25% global minimum corporate tax rate would raise nearly $17 billion more for the world’s 38 poorest countries (for which data is available) than a 15%. These countries are home to 38.6 % of the world’s population.   Multinationals, supported by some economists, claim that a 21% rate would be excessive and would harm developing countries, depriving them of a valuable tool to attract investment. This is a specious argument.   Studies show that when a multinational company considers where to locate a production unit, tax advantage does not take pride of place at all on the list of criteria to be considered. In fact, it appears well behind other issues such as the quality of infrastructure, the education of workers, or legal security.   Additional revenue generated by a global minimum tax must be shared equitably between the home countries of multinational companies and the developing countries where the activities – workforce and raw materials – are sourced.   The Intergovernmental Group of 24 (G24), a body representing emerging economies, is requesting that, in some circumstances, these economies should have priority in taxing profits shifted to tax havens.   Globally, tax avoidance diverts 40% of foreign profits to tax havens, according to ICRICT commissioner Gabriel Zucman.   http://www.factipanel.org/report http://www.icrict.com/press-release/2021/7/1/g20oecd-inclusive-framework-tax-deal-a-missed-opportunity-e6b2g http://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/oecd-tax-deal-mockery-fairness-oxfam http://taxjustice.net/press/oecd-tax-deal-fails-to-deliver/ http://www.icrict.com/press-release/2020/6/14/icrict-report-the-global-pandemic-sustainable-economic-recovery-and-international-taxation http://www.icrict.com/icrict-in-thenews http://bit.ly/3ollcTH http://taxjustice.net/press/tax-abuse-by-oecd-countries-denies-fundamental-human-rights-to-millions/   June 2021   The G7 legalizes the right to defraud, by Thomas Piketty for Le Monde   Last weekend, the G7 ministers announced their intention to apply a minimum tax rate of 15% on the offshore profits of multinationals. Let us be clear: if we leave it at that, it is nothing more and nothing less than the formalisation of a real licence to defraud for the most powerful players.   For small and medium-sized enterprises as well as for the working and middle classes, it is impossible to create a subsidiary to relocate its profits or income to a tax haven. For all these taxpayers, there is no choice but to pay ordinary tax.   However, if we add up taxes on income and profits and social security contributions, both employees and the small and medium-sized self-employed find themselves paying rates in all the G7 countries well above 15%: at least 20-30%, and often 40-50%, or even more.   The G7 announcement is all the more inappropriate because the proPublica website has just published a vast survey confirming what the researchers had already shown: American billionaires pay almost no income tax compared to the extent of their enrichment and what the rest of the population pays.   In practice, the corporate tax is often the final tax paid by the richest (when they pay it). Profits accumulate in companies or ad hoc structures (trusts, holding companies, etc.), which finance most of the lifestyle of the people in question (private jets, bank cards, etc.), almost without any control.   By legalising the fact that multinationals will be able to continue to locate their profits in tax havens at leisure, with a tax rate of 15% as the only tax, the G7 is formalising entry into a world where oligarchs pay structurally less tax than the rest of the population.   How can we break this deadlock? Firstly, by setting a minimum rate higher than 15%, which each country can do right now. As the European Tax Observatory has shown, France could apply a minimum rate of 25% to multinationals, which would bring it 26 billion euros per year, equivalent to almost 10% of health spending.   With a rate of 15%, only slightly higher than the rate applied in Ireland (12.5%), which makes the measure harmless, the revenue would be barely 4 billion.   Part of the 26 billion could be used to improve the financing of the hospitals, schools and the energy transition ; another part to lighten the tax burden on the self-employed and less prosperous employees.   What is certain is that it is illusory to expect European unanimity on such a decision. Only unilateral action, ideally with the support of a few countries, can unblock the situation. Ireland or Luxembourg will undoubtedly lodge a complaint with the European Court of Justice, arguing that the principles of absolute free movement of capital (without any fiscal, social or environmental compensation) defined 30 years ago do not provide for such action. It is difficult to say how the ECJ will decide, but if necessary these rules will have to be denounced and rewritten.   Furthermore, it is urgent to remember that the tax on corporate profits cannot be the final tax for shareholders or managers of companies. It must once again become what it should never have ceased to be, namely an advance payment within the framework of an integrated tax system with progressive income tax at the individual level.   The G7 discussions must be explicitly framed within this framework. In theory, rich countries are believed to have implemented systems for the automatic transmission of international banking information on cross-border holdings and individual financial income in recent years.   Why, then, do they not publish reliable indicators to measure progress? Specifically, the G7 countries should publish detailed information each year showing the taxes paid by people belonging to very high income and wealth groups (fortunes between 1 and 10 million EUROS, between 10 and 100 million EUROS, between 100 million EUROS and 1 billion EUROS, and so on).   Judging by the ProPublica survey, one would probably realize that the wealthiest do not pay much, given the possibilities of downward manipulation of their individual tax income, and that only a progressive wealth tax would make it possible to tax them significantly and in relation to their wealth.   In any case, rather than waiting for the next revelations, all governments should immediately make public the amount of taxes paid by their billionaires and millionaires, especially in France.   Last but not least, this discussion must finally be opened up to the countries of the South. The mechanism envisaged by the G7, according to which each country is responsible for charging a minimum tax to its own multinationals, is only acceptable if it is an advance payment within a broader system of revenue distribution.   The G7 raises the possibility that part of the profits above a certain break-even point (more than 10% per year of the capital invested) will be distributed according to sales in the different countries. But this system will only cover tiny sums and will essentially be reduced to redistribution between the countries of the North.   If the G7 really want to improve their degraded image and above all give the South a chance to develop and build viable states, it is urgent that poor countries have a significant share of the revenues of the multinationals and billionaires of the planet.   http://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2021/06/15/the-g7-legalizes-the-right-to-defraud/ http://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax http://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/g7-global-corporate-tax-deal-far-fair-oxfam http://www.cesr.org/global-minimum-tax-g7-agreement-lacks-legitimacy-fails-tackle-root-problem   Feb. 20   Corruption and Tax Abuse Slow Action on Poverty and Climate Change, write Dalia Grybauskaite and Ibrahim Mayaki - Chairs of the FACTI Panel   The FACTI Panel is the High Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda. It aims to improve the world’s chances of achieving sustainable development by making recommendations that both strengthen current efforts to combat illicit financial flows, and close remaining gaps in the international system.   Cross-border corruption, financial crime and tax abuse are enormous burdens foisted on every country in the world today. The world's poorest countries are particularly hurt by such losses. Resources are swathed in secrecy and held out of reach from tax authorities and law enforcement.   The figures are jaw dropping. A tenth of the world's GDP may be held in offshore financial assets. Just one type of tax abuse–the shopping around for tax-free jurisdictions by multinational corporations–costs countries $500 to $600 billion a year. As much as 2.7 percent of the global GDP is laundered by criminals.   The abuses may be hidden, but their impact is clear: growing inequality and instability, the vast transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest, weak governance entrenched and public services undermined. Illicit financial flows curtail countries' ability to finance sustainable development and improve the lives of ordinary citizens.   Looking at the estimates from the State of Tax Justice report published last year, the potential resource gains from just tax avoidance and evasion are enormous.   Better tax rules that end tax abuses could, for example, help Bangladesh more than treble its social safety net, and enable Canada to finance 14km of new mass transit extensions in Toronto every single year. Recovered resources in Germany could pay for thousands of wind turbines each year, while Gambia could build on the order of 6,500 wells for clean water access.   United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has likened COVID-19 "to an X-ray, revealing fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built."   The pandemic has accelerated corruption and inequality. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime warns of increases in fraud, while the IMF has noted challenges to tax collection. Billionaires' wealth has soared by 27.5 percent while 131 million people were pushed into poverty due to COVID-19.   Fortunately, there is a clear and effective roadmap to tackle these overlapping challenges. We can now assess the limits of the web of existing international instruments and institutions developed to tackle tax abuse, money laundering and corruption.   Previous initiatives have tried to tackle these thorny issues, focusing on more discrete types of illicit financial flows, most often corruption, or made purely technical recommendations.   The Panel has no intention of its proposals devolving into empty slogans, but seeks swift actions. Most importantly, the Panel's approach is independent. It is not shackled by the demands of consensus building, which tends to lead to the lowest common denominator, in terms of outcomes.   There are now 14 concrete recommendations: including stronger laws and instruments to combat cross-border corruption and money laundering, action to tackle the bankers, lawyers and accountants who enable financial crime, strengthened transparency on ownership of companies and trusts and a global minimum tax on profits made by multinationals and digital giants. Stronger laws and institutions are needed to build a system of financial integrity for sustainable development.   We must have greater transparency around public spending, stronger international cooperation to prosecute bribery and global governance of tax abuse and money laundering. Those who enable financial crime must also face punitive sanctions. It's no longer adequate just to expose the kleptocrat stealing the peoples' wealth or the corporation evading taxes, but to ask who is allowing them to get away with it.   An international minimum rate for corporate tax will stop profit-shifting and harmful tax competition among countries. Fair taxation of digitalized economic activity means equitable treatment of digital and traditional businesses. This requires taxing multinational corporations based on global profit.   Such transformations will not come easily. We are calling for a Global Pact for Financial Integrity for Sustainable Development: one by which countries are determined to take ambitious and transformative action to strengthen financial integrity and agree that the additional resources released will be utilized, based on the priorities identified in their national development plans, to achieve sustainable development.   We must not be afraid of bold action, if we are to overcome both pandemic-related setbacks and existing systemic shortcomings.   If we act together and in solidarity with one another to fulfill our existing national and international commitments, and engage in new ones, a better world will come within reach.   * Dalia Grybauskaitė is the former president of Lithuania. Ibrahim Mayaki is the former prime minister of Niger.   http://www.factipanel.org/report http://www.factipanel.org/news http://www.taxjustice.net/reports/the-state-of-tax-justice-2020/ http://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/lawyers-accountants-and-other-professionals-play-key-role-in-cross-border-financial-crime-oecd-warns-in-new-report/ http://www.transparency.org/en/news/cpi-2020-trouble-at-the-top http://www.business-humanrights.org/en/blog/towards-a-social-economy-the-next-generation-of-the-guiding-principles-on-business-and-human-rights/ Visit the related web page
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