A comprehensive framework as outlined in the principles here would provide stakeholders inside and outside of government with the information needed to understand how a tax system works and would prescribe a process for ensuring that meaningful participate informs debate over policies and their implementation. To achieve these goals, GIFT offers the following principles as an elaboration on its previously adopted High-Level Principles of Fiscal Transparency, Participation, and Accountability and Principles of Public Participation in Fiscal Policy. The new principles are intended to apply to all government jurisdictions with the authority to tax and are intended to apply to all country contexts. They are designed to promote improvements in the scope, consistency, and quality of information that governments make available to the public and to establish a framework for how governments meaningfully engage with their stakeholders around issues of tax policy and administration with the ultimate goal of ensuring that public resources are used to advance the public interest.
These new principles address fundamental components of good governance and for the trust needed to ensure a more sustainable fiscal pact, namely: the right of access to information, proactive transparency, accountability, and public participation.
This first draft was finished on August 10, 2021.