The Initiative for Human Rights Principles in Fiscal Policy has made a new submission to the Co-Leads of Workstream I of the negotiations for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. In it we call for stronger commitments on transparency, access to information and human rights.
The submission argues that the Convention’s commitment to align with international human rights law must have concrete implications for how countries collect, exchange and publish tax information. Human rights standards require States to mobilize the maximum available resources for rights, cooperate internationally to tackle tax abuse and illicit financial flows, and ensure public access to information of public interest.
The Initiative proposes strengthening several provisions of the Zero Draft, including through automatic exchange of tax information, public country-by-country reporting, public beneficial-ownership registers and disaggregated data to assess the Convention’s human rights impacts. It also calls for stronger commitments to effectively tax high-net-worth individuals and for secrecy exceptions to be tightly limited.
These measures are essential to ensure the Convention advances a more transparent, equitable and rights-aligned international tax system.
You can read the full submission here.