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TAXEDU

Building tax culture and compliance inside and outside the classroom

Building tax culture and compliance inside and outside the classroom

Editorial Team

 

On 8 February, IFAC (The International Federation of Accountants), ACCA (The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), in collaboration with the OECD, will host the webinar “Fostering taxpayer education to enhance public trust in tax and help achieve SDGs”, focusing on successful approaches to taxpayer education identified in a recent OECD report.

The past few years have seen significant progress in international tax co-operation to tackle fraud, tax avoidance, and tax evasion.

However, important challenges remain for domestic revenue mobilisation. This is especially the case in light of the Covid-19 pandemic: over the past two years, we have seen reduced economic activity while demands on states to provide public goods have increased.

A recent OECD report found that successful taxpayer education can boost the willingness of individuals and businesses to voluntarily pay tax, and thereby play a vital role in mobilising the tax revenues urgently needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and help our economies recover from the pandemic.

Building on the experience of 59 countries, the report provides a unique catalogue of the range of taxpayer education initiatives being undertaken around the world: from student essay writing contests to workshops on complying with new technical regulations; from efforts to inspire the taxpayers of the future while still at school, to assistance in filing this year’s returns.

The report also highlights that tax administrations are not alone in their focus on taxpayer education. Many of the initiatives it features are conducted in partnership either with other government departments, schools, business associations, and non-governmental organisations. Partnerships offer opportunities for expansion and scale that otherwise might not be possible, while also ensuring access to the target populations, and specific skills and resources.

It is clear that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to taxpayer education, with countries operating under differing resource constraints and pursuing different goals. There are, however, commonalities among this diversity, enabling the identification of common challenges and solutions. All taxpayer education initiatives focus on one of three key approaches:

  1. Teaching: providing in-depth engagement with the audience, which is often, but not always the youth
  1. Communicating: higher-level engagement focussed on awareness-raising campaigns
  1. Providing practical assistance: supporting taxpayers directly in their compliance obligations.

Based on the outcomes of the OECD report, ACCA and IFAC will host a webinar exploring link between taxpayer education, public trust and achieving SDGs.

 

Date: 8 February

Time: 15:00-16:45 CET

Medium: YouTube livestream, audience participation via Sli.do

 

OECD experts, EU policymakers and representatives from academia, industry and national administrations will discuss the benefits of taxpayer education, share best practices and answer audience questions.

 

Register here to attend the webinar.