Regional CSO Capacity Building and Parliamentarian Forum on Fair Taxation
10–11 December 2025 | Colombo, Sri Lanka
The two-day regional convening brought together civil society organizations (CSOs), researchers, activists, and parliamentarians from South Asia to strengthen understanding, solidarity, and political momentum around tax justice and progressive taxation. Organized by LDC Watch and South Aliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE), the events aimed to address rising inequality, shrinking fiscal space, climate-induced crises, and the need for fair, people-centered tax systems in the region.
Day 1: CSO Capacity Building Workshop (10 December 2025)
The workshop, themed “Reclaiming Public Wealth through an Equitable Tax System in South Asia,” focused on building foundational knowledge of tax justice, examining how regressive tax systems exacerbate inequality, and equipping CSOs with advocacy tools. The day opened with a strong message of solidarity with the people of Sri Lanka following Cyclone Ditwah, highlighting how climate disasters disproportionately affect marginalized communities and expose long-standing structural inequalities.
Key sessions underscored that South Asia hosts immense wealth alongside widespread poverty, a paradox sustained by weak progressive taxation, heavy reliance on indirect taxes, tax exemptions for elites, and global tax abuses. Speakers emphasized that the claim of “no money” for social protection, climate adaptation, and public services is false—resources exist but are concentrated among the wealthy and lost through tax injustice, evasion, and illicit financial flows.
Country analyses and group work revealed common regional patterns: dominance of VAT and indirect taxes, minimal taxation of wealth, agriculture, and large corporations, and disproportionate burdens on women, informal workers, and low-income households. Participants proposed a shared way forward, including shifting toward direct and wealth taxes, removing elite exemptions, gender-responsive tax policies, stronger tax administration, taxing multinational corporations, and reinvesting revenues into public services and climate resilience.
Day 2: South Asian Regional Parliamentarian Forum on Fair Taxation (11 December 2025)
The Parliamentarian Forum deepened dialogue between CSOs and lawmakers, focusing on translating tax justice principles into policy action. Members of Parliament(MPs) from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and the Maldives, alongside a former MP from Nepal, discussed domestic constraints such as IMF conditionalities, debt servicing, corruption, elite capture, and weak international tax frameworks.
Parliamentarians acknowledged the regressive nature of current systems and the political challenges of implementing progressive taxation, particularly where elites influence policy and elections. Discussions highlighted the urgent need to broaden tax bases fairly, reduce reliance on indirect taxes, tax wealth and large landholdings, modernize and digitize tax administration, and rebuild public trust through transparency and accountability.
A strong emphasis was placed on regional and global reform, especially the proposed UN Tax Convention, as a critical mechanism to curb tax havens, profit shifting, and the “race to the bottom” in corporate taxation. Speakers stressed that without fair international rules, domestic reforms alone will remain limited.
Conclusion and Way Forward
Across both days, participants come to a common understanding that tax justice is not merely a technical issue but a social, political, and moral imperative. Progressive taxation is essential to reduce inequality, finance quality public services, support climate justice, and reclaim public wealth. The convening concluded with a call to strengthen a unified South Asian Tax Justice Campaign, deepen CSO–parliamentarian collaboration, and engage strategically at national, regional, and global levels to advance equitable, transparent, and people-centered tax systems across South Asia.