At ILP, sustainable development is a core part of our mission and so much of our work is dedicated to advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Four years on, there is growing concern that to reach the ambitious UN SDGs, developing countries in particular will need more income and to change the way they collect and spend it. Taxation is central to the development policy agenda as sustainable financing is increasingly recognised as a key tool to combat the human rights deficits identified by the SDGs and taxation has the greatest prospect of sustainable financing. This is why we have made tax one of our five core focus areas. Current taxation strategies, particularly in developing countries often have a particularly negative impact on women – both in revenue gathering and expenditure.
Our Program Officer for tax reform and anti-corruption, Gabrielle Beran, explores in this article why women, particularly women in developing countries, are impacted by taxation systems in a way that has only recently become part of the mainstream tax and development debate and how ISLP is working to change this.