The other virus: tax fraud

The article "The Other Virus: Tax Fraud - Strengthening Social Protection in Latin America" analyzes how the tax structures in Latin America privilege the rich and big companies, thus forcing the working class to pay more taxes than the richest 1% of the population. it is the fourth and last of a series of articles by Public Services International (PSI) in association with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

The article "The Other Virus: Tax Fraud - Strengthening Social Protection in Latin America" analyzes how the tax structures in Latin America privilege the rich and big companies, thus forcing the working class to pay more taxes than the richest 1% of the population. it is the fourth and last of a series of articles by Public Services International (PSI) in association with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation that investigated how free trade agreements, neoliberalism, and the lack of tax fairness in Latin America have undermined health and socioeconomic development strategies in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The final article points out that the tax structures in the region result in and reinforce two related problems: Latin America continues to be the most unequal region in the world and governments continue without the resources to invest in public health or economic recovery. In addition to explaining how this reality limits the capacity to fight the pandemic throughout the region, the document offers a series of concrete policy recommendations that would allow governments to sustainably finance public services, reduce social inequality and pay the bill of the current the crisis.

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The other virus: tax fraud

In addition to explaining how the unequal tax structures in Latin America limit capacity to fight the pandemic throughout the region, the article offers a series of concrete policy recommendations that would allow governments to sustainably finance public services, reduce social inequality and pay the bill of the current the crisis.

The first article, "Pandemic: Big Business for Transnational Corporations", explained how clauses contained in ‘free trade’ agreements, known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, allow large transnational companies to take legal action against governments’ emergency responses to the pandemic.

The second article, "Facing the Pandemic in Latin America: An analysis of vulnerabilities after 30 years of neoliberalism", analyzed the arguments and perspectives that led to depleted health and other public services in the region throughout recent decades.

The third article, "‘Free trade’ agreements and the pandemic", analyzed how the region's choice to export primary products instead of developing industrial capacity has combined with privatizations of public services and the general reduction of the role of the state within a broader context of international competition to result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, the collapse of public health systems, a pervasive lack of personal protective equipment and weak political coordination to combat the virus.

Download all articles of the series:

Pandemic article series