18th March, 2015
Churches are among a coalition of groups which have joined in launching a new body aimed at pushing for reforms to bring about a "fairer, more effective and just international tax system" that doesn’t reinforce inequality and poverty.
The new Independent Commission for the Reform of International Tax Corporation was initiated by a group of organisations including the World Council of Churches, Christian Aid, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice and Oxfam.
Meeting in New York this week, its members are evaluating proposals for international corporate tax reform with its recommendations to be made public and presented at the annual International Conference on Financing for Development which takes place in Ethiopia in July.
Rev Suzanna Matale, a commissioner of the ICRICT and general secretary of the Zambian Council of Churches, said it is the role of faith leaders to "ask hard questions and demand honest answers as to why people must be desperately poor in the midst of all the global natural resources endowed upon our nations as a free gift from God".
"We must insist on reforming economic and financial structures so that they can be turned into just and life-giving systems…" she said.
José Antonio Ocampo, chairman of the ICRICT, said that while the world had changed, the international tax system had not. "Corporations play governments against each other, for example, in encouraging race-to-the-bottom tax incentives, and the public loses out. There are billions of dollars at stake."
– DAVID ADAMS
