SANTIAGO. The Comprehensive Center for Local Development (CIDEL), the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Ciudad Alternativa, the Center for Research on Women’s Action (CIPAF) and the Solidaridad Foundation held the seminar Equity and Rights in Tax Reform: A Necessary Dialogue in this city, an event that included the participation of experts on the subject, students, academics, professionals from different branches of knowledge and members of social and community organizations.
Economist Apolinar Veloz gave a lecture entitled Equity and Rights in Tax Reform. What kind of reform do we need?, while a panel composed of Nelson Hahn and Agustín González, moderated by Paula Rodríguez, addressed the topic Tax Justice and Rights: Towards an Inclusive Reform.
The Seminar on tax reform was held within the framework of the “More Rights” project, which seeks to strengthen the participation and influence capacities of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the public agenda and political dialogues, in order to advance in matters of gender justice, decent work and socio-ecological transformation, with the co-financing of the European Union.
Government sources have reported that the President of the Republic may soon present the country with a proposal for Tax Reform within the framework of a package of reforms that he deems necessary.
The National Development Strategy END 2030 (Law No. 1-12) “establishes the need for political, economic and social forces to reach a fiscal pact aimed at financing sustainable development and guaranteeing long-term fiscal sustainability, through sustained support for a comprehensive fiscal restructuring process and the framework of a fiscal responsibility law that establishes standards and penalties to ensure compliance.
The END also suggests that the fiscal pact would imply the beginning of a process aimed at reducing tax evasion, increasing the quality, efficiency and transparency of public spending, increasing the efficiency, transparency and equity of the tax structure, consolidating incentive regimes in the Tax Code, and rationalizing tariff schemes in the provision of public services, among others.
In this regard, the institutions that implement the project Strengthening CSOs and their capacity to engage in dialogue with decision-makers at the legislative and municipal levels around a human rights agenda, consider it pertinent to begin a process of dialogue and analysis on the Tax Reform and how it could impact marginalized sectors that are also excluded from decision-making spaces.
At the opening of the event, Professor Alfredo Matías, Executive Director of CIDEL, said that the National Development Strategy conceives a fiscal pact with broad participation from the various social, political and economic sectors, so that in the process of a possible fiscal reform, the active participation of citizens must be made possible so that they can express their opinions on the type of reform that should be approved.
The Seminar “Equity and Rights in Tax Reform: A Necessary Dialogue” is part of the set of activities defined for the development of a consensual rights agenda, developed and led by CSOs and discussed at a programmatic, technical and methodological level, with political actors committed to human rights, equality and social justice, jointly identifying windows of opportunity and strategies for its implementation.
