ActionAid's Tax Power Campaign Reflection-Action Toolkit

This toolkit forms part of ActionAid’s Tax Power Campaign, which seeks to make sure that big companies start paying their fair share of taxes in developing countries, and to campaign against tax dodging and tax breaks that are taking billions of dollars away from vital public services every year. As stated by ActionAid, “a fairer global tax system could provide a dramatic breakthrough to funding for a world free of poverty and inequality. Developing countries lose an estimated US$213 billion a year to tax avoidance by multinational companies. ActionAid estimates that developing companies give away a further USD $138bn in tax breaks to companies, despite evidence that they're not necessary to attract investors.”

In order to ensure that the people most affected by this issue are aware of their rights, or how to claim and defend them, ActionAid is working with communities in developing countries to raise awareness. This toolkit was developed for that purpose and is intended for community groups and their local facilitators.

The tools explore the following key ideas:

• Taxes pay for public services.
• Most of us are tax payers.
• The richer should pay more tax, the poorer less.
• Foreign companies don’t pay their fair amount of tax.

Section 1 of the toolkit looks at local tax problems, while section 2 looks at the effects of international and national tax on local public services. Section 3 expands on national and international tax issues, and section 4 assesses the work of ActionAid.

The toolkit is structured as follows:

Section 1: Local problems on tax
Tool 01: Tax Role play - – introducing local tax issues
Tool 02: The tax stones – how is tax collected and spent?
Tool 03: The teacher, the vendor and the farmer – do you pay tax?
Tool 04: The shopping list – what is ‘VAT’?
Tool 05: The market mountain – what market tax problems exist?

Section 2: Local problems on public services
Tool 06: The public service map – how good are your local public services?
Tool 07: The tax body map – effect of no public service financing (esp. on women/youth)
Tool 08: The ideal school – paying twice for education?
Tool 09: The ‘tax-pays-for’ photo – is tax used on public services?

Section 3: National and international roots of local problems
Tool 10: The national cow – tax makes the budget grow
Tool 12: The pot leaks – corruption, misallocation and tax avoidance
Tool 13: The tax biscuit – who is eating all the biscuit?
Tool 14: Chapatti diagram – who collects and spends tax, locally and nationally

Section 4: How good has our local tax work been?
Tool 15: Local tax indicators – what have we gained on tax? (for Local Rights Programme' staff)
Tool 16: The tax seeds – describing one local tax gain