Advancing Tax Justice through Human Rights International Strategy Meeting April 29-30, 2015 | Lima, Peru Session 3: Tax to Reverse Economic and Gender Inequalities Panel: • • • • • • Rosa María Cañete, Oxfam Marciano Buffon, Instituto de Justicia Fiscal Brasil Juan Pablo Jimenez, Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean Kathleen Lahey, Queens University Mae Buenaventura, Jubilee South-Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development Corina Rodriguez, DAWN Moderator: Liz Nelson, TJN Background: Taxation is one of the most important instruments governments deploy to generate the ‘maximum available resources’ for the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights, as they are required to do under international human rights law. Yet, tax also plays a fundamental role in redistributing resources in ways that can either deepen or relieve inequalities of all kinds. In this session, participants will focus on tax as a key policy tool for upholding the equal human rights of all people, with a special focus on women’s rights. Economic and gender inequalities are deeply interrelated (manifested most clearly by women’s relative lack of income and wealth), and this discussion will reflect on tax as a structural driver of both. In this session, speakers and participants will share experiences on how tax laws, policies and practices have contributed to/interacted with economic and gender inequalities in different contexts, including through the overall amount of tax that is raised, from whom it is raised and how, and the progressivity/regressivity of the tax system. The impact of specific taxes on women’s human rights and on the other structural drivers of gender inequality (including unpaid care work) will be analyzed and discussed with reference to human rights standards, drawing from studies in different countries. The discussion will also encompass the international context, illicit financial flows and global economic governance, as both a constraint to national fiscal policy and a direct determinant of inequalities globally. Participants will offer ideas and evidence on how tax could be used to tackle and ultimately reverse growing inequalities, and how existing human rights standards can infuse tax policy with the higher-order priority of contributing to substantive equality and an end to structural discrimination. Framing questions: • How far is tax policy a determinant of economic inequality? How far is the weakening of the fiscal state over the last 30 years responsible for sharp rises in inequality both within and between countries? • What are the different ways in which tax policies can actively tackle inequalities (especially economic and gender inequalities) – for example through resourcing public services, redistributing income/wealth and repricing certain goods or activities? • What evidence do we have about which specific tax policies/reforms help to tackle economic inequalities – and under what conditions? • How does the economic inequality impact of taxation intersect with the impact on other types of inequality – in particular gender inequality? • What is the impact of tax on women’s human rights and gender equality in specific contexts? What changes would be necessary to make the tax system a force for gender equality? • How does the tax system interact with/reinforce other drivers of women’s inequality, including social norms and discrimination in the workplace? • What successes and challenges have we faced in terms of raising public awareness of these issues and getting them onto policy agendas? • What tools and data can we use/do we need to delve further into the relationship between tax and economic and/or gender inequalities? • In what ways can human rights standards and human rights mechanisms be used and leveraged at national and international levels? • What sorts of collaboration is needed amongst the human rights, tax justice and women’s rights communities to more effectively reverse inequalities?