On April 10th 2019, Oxfam’s partner MIFTAH launched the Fair Tax Monitor OPT . The FTM report aims to provide the Palestinian public and civil society organizations with an overview of the national tax system.
The FTM relies on publicly available data on the tax burden, distribution of taxes and management of tax administration to establish an evidentiary base for effective assessment of the fairness of the tax system, and to identify the gaps and consequences of existing policy solutions. The report includes recommendations for decisionmakers too, which respond to the needs of OPTs citizens and the values of social justice
During the launch, researcher Firas Jaber presented the main findings from the research. His main conclusion was to restructure tax policies in such a way that the focus is shifted from indirect (consumption) taxes to direct taxes such as “wealth taxes”. He also stressed the importance of a progressive fiscal policy, and proposed to increase the number of tax brackets in order to raise the level of social equity. Furthermore, he maintained it is key to take into consideration the socioeconomic goals of tax policies such as education, health and social protection.
The launching of this report is part of MIFTAH’s OXFAM-funded “Finance for Development” project, which it implements in partnership with AMAN and ARIJ.
You can read more about the launch here (link: http://miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=26548&CategoryId=36) and read the full report here (link)