MIFTAH project coordinator Tamara Tamimi and economic analyst and researcher Dr. Nasr Abdel Kareem recently participated in a workshop on “tax justice” held in Entebbe, Uganda between November 6 and 8.

MIFTAH’s contribution is part of its OXFAM-funded project “Finance for Development” in partnership with AMAN and ARIJ, meant to influence the Palestinian government’s fiscal policies towards achieving social justice.

The workshop aimed at exchanging expertise, opinions and information among a group of experts working on the implementation of the “fair tax monitor” methodology developed by OXFAM and executed in 10 countries. MIFTAH is leading the methodology’s application in Palestine.

Delegations from Tunisia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda participated in the workshop in addition to the methodology’s developers from OXFAM’s Netherlands headquarters and members of the Zimbabwe-based Tax Justice Network in Africa.

The abovementioned methodology diagnoses how just a tax system is and the extent to which it contributes to achieving social justice through analyzing the following points: Tax system structure; tax burden and progressivity, revenue sufficiency and tax leakages, tax administration, government spending and transparency and accountability.

Tamimi maintained that this approach was the first step to carrying out comprehensive interventions towards tax reforms in a way that would contribute to achieving social and economic justice. She also said it encouraged the official establishment to be open to the idea of adopting standards of social justice in designing fiscal government policies. This, in turn would promote a wider range of options and alternatives in conducting the necessary amendments and reforms to the tax system in Palestine.