April 28, 2008 – “The purpose of CIAT’s meetings is to share the diversity that characterizes us and that makes us strong”. With this statement and other reflections, CIAT Executive Secretary Claudino Pita opened the 42nd CIAT General Assembly, “Strategies to promote voluntary compliance”, held in Antigua, Guatemala from April 21 to 24.

In his opening address, Mr. Pita made special reference to the “eradication of extreme poverty and hunger”, one of the eight goals of the Millennium Declaration adopted by Resolution of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2000. In this connection, he noted that “progress towards each of the objectives set requires that governments show real solidarity and, in addition, that they develop certain policies and actions that will require sufficient financial resources”.Regarding the fact that more progress and well-being are needed in many countries today, the Executive Secretary pointed out that “it is possible to see taxation as an essential instrument to move towards more liberal and equitable societies and, consequently, we may also consider tax administrations in modern democracies as the administrators of self-taxation systems, that is, laws discussed and passed by the legitimate representatives of society, the implementation of which seeks and makes it possible to obtain genuine resources for the development of public policies, among them those of a social nature”.

Mr. Claudino Pita also pointed out that in spite of the many initiatives and actions that countries have undertaken to modernize tax administrations, it is necessary for them to gear future tax reforms towards sufficiency and equity, both of which have always been traditional objectives of taxation.
In this sense, he noted that “the sufficiency of the tax system is linked to its ability to raise resources in an amount adequate to finance State actions”. He also emphasized that “to meet this requirement it is desirable for taxes to be widely spread. However, broad-based taxation is sometimes affected by exemptions and tax evasion”.

Mr. Pita pointed out that equity is “related to the advisability to spread out the tax burden considering taxpayers’ contribution capacity and favoring progressiveness, which does not mean to disregard the redistribution effect that social spending may have. However, the recurrent reference to the greater redistribution potential of government spending as compared to taxes appears to be exaggerated, especially when the purpose of such references is to justify a lack of concern with the equity of taxes or, even worse, their regressive nature”.

Finally, the Executive Secretary expressed his gratitude to the Tax Administration Superintendence (SAT) for its support and efforts in organizing this very successful meeting.