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Of citizens and taxes: A global scan of civil society work on taxation

Nov 16, 2020

In the last two decades, civil society engagement with taxation issues has grown by leaps and bounds, particularly in lower-income countries. This growth can be linked to global policy shifts since the beginning of the millennium—e.g. the UN’s agendas on Financing for Development and on the Sustainable Development Goals—focused on empowering these countries to raise additional resources to finance and direct their own development, and to an increasing focus by international NGOs on the negative impact of the international tax system on lower-income countries.

As the International Budget Partnership (IBP) embarks on a new Tax Equity Initiative, this was a good moment to take a detailed look at the emerging field of civil society engagement with domestic tax issues, to understand its broad features and the challenges that it faces. That report is available here along with a dataset of 171 organisations across 66 countries with information on what types of work they are engaged in, what types of tax issues they work on, if they are part of any international or regional networks and their main publications on tax from recent years.

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Authors

Paolo de Renzio

Senior Research Fellow, International Budget Partnership

Paolo de Renzio joined the International Budget Partnership in October 2010 as Senior Research Fellow and is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His research agenda covers a broad range of topics, including budget transparency and accountability, equity and justice in budgeting, taxation and tax expenditures, among others. He also supports the team producing the Open Budget Survey. Prior to joining the IBP, Paolo worked as a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute; as an economist and policy advisor in Papua New Guinea’s Ministry of Finance; and as a UNDP public sector specialist, lecturer, and independent consultant in Mozambique. He has been a consultant for the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Commission, and for a number of bilateral donor agencies and international NGOs. Paolo holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where his research focused on the impact of donor policies on budget reforms in developing countries. He also holds an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from ‘Bocconi’ in Milan, Italy.

Fariya Mohiuddin

Senior Program Officer, Tax Equity, International Budget Parnership

Fariya joined the International Budget Partnership as a Senior Program Officer in 2019. Prior to joining IBP, Fariya was the Strategic Programs Researcher at the Tax Justice Network where she provided research and network building support to Tax Justice Network’s programs. Her specific focus has been on developing a human rights, feminist, and gender equality focused network of tax activists and researchers, and she was the lead organiser for all of Tax Justice Network’s major convenings from 2017 to 2019. Fariya has also worked with the International Centre for Tax and Development, the World Bank Group, the Ford Foundation, and Open Society Foundation on research projects on political accountability, citizen engagement and transparency in West Africa. She holds both a Bachelor’s of Arts (Economic and International Relations) and a Master’s of Global Affairs from the University of Toronto.

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