Taxing for Justice: Fiscal Policy, Inequality, and Human Rights

AbstractThe paper examines various rationales for applying equality and human rights proofing mechanisms to fiscal policy. The principle of using available resources to the maximum to progressively realise human rights, and not to erode the revenue capacity of developing nations to do likewise, is at the heart of emerging human rights norms. To date, Irish budgetary processes and major policy statements such as the Commission on Taxation or the draft outline National Plan on Business and Human Rights Strategy have not engaged with the principles of maximising available resources or extraterritoriality. Proofing fiscal policy is also relevant from the perspective of fiscal welfare where taxation instruments, traditionally used as a revenue-gathering mechanism, are increasingly used as distributional mechanisms to achieve policy outcomes in pensions, health, housing and employment, with important equality and distributive dimensions, particularly from gender, age and socioeconomic perspectives. A number of practical institutional mechanisms and evaluative questions can guide equality and human rights proofing of fiscal policy, but commitments to maximise resources to realise rights also need to be promoted through a public discourse which sees taxation as potential investment in society rather than a burden or cost on the economy.

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The Promise and Pitfalls of the Sustainable Development Goals

Human Rights and 21st Century Challenges ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198824770.003.0013 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 266-294

Author(s):

Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona ◽

Kate Donald

Keyword(s):

Sustainable Development ◽

Human Rights ◽

Fiscal Policy ◽

Sustainable Development Goals ◽

Social Protection ◽

The Sustainable Development ◽

Development Goals ◽

Persistent Poverty ◽

Development Approach ◽

Human Rights Based Approach

This chapter will critically address the contribution of a human rights-based approach in addressing persistent poverty. Using the commitments of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a lens, it will examine how a human rights approach should influence the conceptualization and measurement of poverty, and the policies and financing instruments used to tackle it. The authors examine several crucial policy and action areas, such as social protection, gender equality, fiscal policy, improving participation and accountability, and contrast the prevailing ‘traditional’ development approach with an approach grounded in human rights. It asks how far we have come in changing the paradigm and what are the crucial actions needed to realize the ‘transformation’ envisaged in the SDGs, including the elimination of extreme poverty.

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Introduction

Tax, Inequality, and Human Rights ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190882228.003.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 1-30

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Fiscal Policy ◽

Public Goods ◽

The State ◽

Fiscal Consolidation ◽

The Public ◽

Goods And Services ◽

Human Rights Norms ◽

Setting Parameters

This introductory chapter illustrates some of the linkages between tax and human rights. Taxation affects which resources stay in private versus public hands, which activities are encouraged or discouraged, how much is available to the state, and who pays for and receives the public goods and services the state provides. Human rights, in turn, inform not only how tax policy should be made, but what policies are permissible, when, and why, setting parameters for the revenue-raising objectives and distributive effects of taxation, as well as the processes by which tax laws are adopted and implemented. In short, tax affects the realization of human rights in all countries—developed and developing alike—through its role in resource mobilization, redistribution, regulation, and representation. The chapter provides an overview of the volume’s contents and discusses how the policy of fiscal consolidation underpins many of the phenomena examined in those contributions. It then identifies some of the key ways in which human rights norms should feature in future debates over fiscal policy.

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