Saturday, September 1, 2001
Volume:
17
Issue:
9
367
Abstract:
On July 6, 2001, the United Nations released a report calling for the examination of creating an International Tax Organization (ITO), whose powers would include helping curb international tax evasion and tax avoidance, harmful tax competition, and strengthen tax administration, among other things.
The report supplements the adoption in September 2000, of the Millennium Declaration by the U.N. General Assembly. The Declaration collectively committed the U.N. members to work to free the world of extreme poverty and towards that end endorsed International Development Goals for 2015: a reduction in half of the proportion of persons living in extreme poverty and those who are hungry, and those who lack access to safe drinking water; the achievement of universal primary education and gender equality in education; achievement of a three-fourths decline in maternal mortality and a two-thirds decline in mortality among children under five; reversal of the incidence and spread of HIV/AIDS and provision of special assistance to AIDS orphans; and improvement of the lives of 100 million slum dwellers…[more]