Making Tax Work for Women's Rights

Making Tax Work for Women's Rights draws on ActionAid’s work on women’s rights and tax justice. They find that governments of countries in the global South are often missing out on large amounts of corporate income tax due to tax breaks given to business. Southern country governments are spending only 0.03 per cent of GDP on programmes carried out by women’s ministries or agencies, compared to the 0.5 per cent of GDP they lose to these corporate tax incentives. Women need quality, gender-responsive public services because women make up a majority of people living in poverty, do the vast majority of unpaid care work and require specific services for the fulfilment of their sexual and reproductive health and rights. The briefing asserts that governments must maximise the tax revenue they raise and raise them progressively to fund public services that benefit women. Governments should also carry out tax impact assessments to identify the direct and indirect effects of taxes by gender, and end features of tax law which discriminate against women.

Read the complete briefing here.