Global Christian groups launched a new campaign advocating for tax justice at the UN in New York City last week.
The ‘Zacchaeus Project’, part of the New International Financial and Economic Architecture initiative – a joint effort by the Council for World Mission, Lutheran World Federation, World Communion of Reformed Churches and World Council of Churches, is calling for a global tax and economic system “which delivers equity and makes reparation for exploitation and injustice”.
Zacchaeus meets Jesus, depicted in a stained glass windown at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Jericho. PICTURE: Tango7174 (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
The campaign’s name comes from the Biblical character of the wealthy tax collector Zacchaeus whose story is recorded in Luke 19. Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus as He passed through the town of Jericho and when Jesus saw him, He told Zacchaeus to come down, adding, controversially, that He would stay at the tax collector’s house. Zacchaeus answered Jesus by saying that he was giving half his possessions to the poor and would pay those he cheated four times the amount that he had stolen from them.
“Zacchaeus’ changed ways are signs of the changes needed to our systems so that through the fruit of our work and wealth the poor are lifted up and those who have been exploited are recompensed,” says a concept note for the project.
“Taxation is an important tool for sharing wealth equitably within and across countries as well as for holding corporations and citizens accountable for their responsibility towards upholding the common good, including care for the global ecological commons.”
The Zacchaeus tax campaign is specifically calling for the enactment of progressive wealth taxes at global and national levels to “curb the growing concentration of wealth in the hands of an increasingly powerful few, hand-in-hand with increased public spending to stamp out poverty” as well as demanding an end to tax evasion and avoidance by multinational corporations and affluent individuals.
It is also “urgently” calling for “progressive carbon and pollution taxes at different levels to protect our only planetary home” and for the “immediate implementation of a financial transaction tax on trade in equities, bonds, currencies and derivatives to curb harmful speculative activities”.