Improving trust in tax to build a better world: looking beyond G20

On 13 September 2022, ACCA, IFAC and PAFA, in collaboration with the OECD and the World Bank, organised the launch event of Public Trust in Tax: Global Perspectives, to discuss the main findings of the survey and identify tangible recommendations to address the trust in tax issue. With over 1260 registrations from over 130 countries, the webinar was watched live by more than 700 participants.

Since 2017, ACCA and IFAC have gathered data on the attitudes and opinions of the general public across the G20 towards their tax systems, as well as the main actors of these tax systems.

Five years on, Public Trust in Tax: Global Perspectives  is our very first survey to look beyond the world’s wealthiest economies and into the issues which will be most relevant for this increasing share of the global population.

Reflecting the views of over 5,600 people across fourteen countries, the survey results give us an insight into whom our respondents trust and what concerns them, and this is backed up by expert opinion from professionals, academics and tax authority officials.

After opening remarks by Helen Brand, OBE, Chief Executive at ACCA and Alan Johnson, President of IFAC, and a keynote speech shared between Grace Perez-Navarro, Deputy Director of the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration,  and Joseph Stead from her team, Jason Piper, Head of Taxation at ACCA presented the main findings of the report.

These main findings were then discussed during the panel session moderated by Scott Hanson, Director at  IFAC, and welcoming Ayla Majid, Founder and CEO, Planetiv, and board member of several organisations; Tomas Balco, Senior Adviser - BEPS Capacity Building Team at the OECD ; Rajul Awasthi, Global Lead for Domestic Resource Mobilization at the World Bank Group; and Gabriel Vásquez Tristancho, Tax Partner at Baker Tilly Colombia. Concluding remarks were delivered by Alta Prinsloo, CEO of PAFA

The challenge for governments over the next thirty years will be to fund health and social care, infrastructure development and the needs of an ageing population, against a backdrop of resource and environment challenges. This is particularly true for developing economies - which are at the heart of the Public Trust in Tax new survey - where existing resources and capacity to collect revenue are already stretched. This puts an additional pressure on governments to find responsible ways to spend more, while at the same time facing an unprecedented trust crisis.

It’s a vicious circle: the lack of trust threatens the key resource enabling any government across the world to meet today’s challenges – ie tax revenues - but without effective tax systems, governments cannot fund the initiatives to build that trust. And yet without that revenue, governments cannot deliver on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Now more than ever, the relationship between taxpayers and governments, and between businesses, society and tax systems, will be fundamental to the success of economies in both the short and long terms.

 Exploring some of these interlocking themes, our distinguished panellists shared their views from a regional perspective around 3 main questions:

•         What is the role of tax in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals?

•         How far has COVID crystallised opinions on tax systems?

•         And the correlation between tax literacy and education levels with high tax morale

Helen Brand, OBE,  ACCA’s Chief Executive said: “Set within the growing international literature on tax morale, we hope that the comparative data from Public Trust in Tax: Global Perspectives can form the basis of conversations between tax stakeholders to improve the operation of tax systems across the globe.

ACCA and IFAC, along with our other partners, look forward to continuing to explore trust in tax, as societies around the world face the challenges of new economic, social and physical environments. Fostering transparency and accountability is very much a part of what professional accountancy organisations are striving to achieve.”