Here’s how.  Public Services International has produced an eight-part briefing series on tax. These briefs help ensure unions and workers have all the facts and arguments they need to win a fairer tax system. These briefs cover themes such as ending tax havens, taxing corporations as single firms, strengthening tax authorities, and provide simple and effective analysis for how to win these vital changes.  PSI has long been an advocate for fixing the broken global corporate tax rules and using the $30 trillion USD stashed in tax havens to fund quality public services. Covid now means the task is urgent.

Tax matters now more than ever

While frontline workers continue to fight Covid-19, the economic costs of the pandemic are beginning to mount.

Governments are faced with falling revenues and rising expenditures to support social protections and health systems creaking from decades of under funding - often caused by tax avoidance.

Global tax revenues declined 11.5% between 2007 to 2009 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and will probably fall even further as the Covid induced recession places intense pressure on public budgets.

Avoiding crippling austerity will require significant restructuring of public debt (see our new series on Debt and Workers) as well as new ways to ensure those who have amassed enormous wealth pay their fair share.

PSI has long argued that we must tax wealth, end the race to the bottom on tax competition and stop corporate tax dodging once and for all.

But workers and unions are often told that we cannot stop the mega wealthy and corporations dodging their taxes.

Their armies of accounting firms, lawyers and lobbyists spend massive amounts of money to stop us even discussing the scandal of corporate tax dodging. Yet, after a series of leaks, public anger is mounting at the sheer scale of abuse.

Tax expert Gabriel Zucman, who is a commissioner on the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, estimates that tax avoidance diverts 40% of global foreign profits into tax havens. (Check out our Brief on Tax Havens).

American multinationals alone have been estimated to deprive the EU of nearly 25 billion euros in corporate taxes annually.

You can explore a new tax data map to see how much profit and tax revenue your country loses (or attracts) here.