Feminist economists and movements have long spotlighted how regressive tax systems—alongside a harmful international tax regime—undermine efforts to advance gender equality. Progressive and redistributive taxation is a precondition for building feminist and rights-based economies that invest in gender-responsive public goods and services, climate action, and the fulfilment of human rights instead of the maximization of profit. The confluence of insufficient public revenues, regressive tax measures, and illicit financial flows—alongside a debt crisis that substantially drains the coffers of Global South countries—drives a context of ever-increasing austerity and underinvestment in care. This dynamic relies upon and directly increases unpaid care responsibilities, primarily of women and gender-diverse people. Negotiations to establish a legally binding UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, which kicked off in 2025, provide a critical opening for Global South countries and civil society to advance their long-standing calls for tax justice.148
The U.S. continues to reject multilateral efforts in service of tax justice
In February 2025, the U.S. fully withdrew from the UN Tax Convention process, rejecting both the negotiations and any future outcomes.149 While significant in its explicit rejection of multilateralism and the longer pattern of strategic disengagement in processes that threaten US companies’ bottom lines, U.S. disengagement offers a potential silver lining. By exiting early, the U.S. cannot spend the negotiation period pushing for a weakened text only to reject the final agreement later, after shaping it to its advantage—as it has done with major multilateral agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol and the OECD ‘two pillar’ proposal on base erosion and profit-shifting (BEPS).150
U.S. companies and individuals are some of the worst perpetrators of cross-border tax abuse, making it all the more indefensible that the U.S. has pulled out of the UN Tax Convention, as it potentially dilutes enforcement. Multinational corporations headquartered in the U.S. are responsible for a substantial portion of revenue losses due to cross-border tax abuse, having caused US$495 billion of tax losses out of the global total of US$1.7 trillion (or 29% of the total) from 2016 to 2021. In their 2025 State of Tax Justice report, Tax Justice Network revealed how profit-shifting by U.S. multinationals to avoid taxation has become more aggressive since the first Trump Administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, nearly doubling from 2016 to 2021.151 These figures underscore how cross-border tax abuse operates as a systematic mechanism of value extraction from the Global South, rather than an issue of isolated corporate malpractice.
Substantial progressive advances on the negotiations for the UN Tax Convention
The first three substantive negotiation sessions for the UN Tax Convention took place in 2025. The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) for the UN Tax Convention will convene three times per year until 2027, at which point the final text and protocols will be due for submission. During the third session in Nairobi in November 2025, delegates emphasized the relevance of the decisions adopted at FfD4 in Seville—especially the commitment to strengthening domestic resource mobilization. As the Center for Economic and Social Rights notes, debates over seemingly technical issues for the Convention are “actually a fight over who gets to tax and who benefits… The words we choose matter and shape who gets taxed, and who doesn’t.”152
Key areas of contention over the course of the negotiations included the following:
- Fair allocation of taxing rights: While all states endorsed “fairness” in principle, they diverged on how to achieve it. A key divide was whether taxing rights should be based on economic activity or on physical business presence. At the August sessions, Global North countries—including EU member states, the UK, Norway, and the Republic of Korea—favored physical-presence rules and did not back taxation on the basis of revenue generation, a stance that largely protects the interests of residence jurisdictions concentrated in the Global North.153 In contrast, at the Nairobi sessions in December, African Group countries (led by Kenya) argued for fair taxing rights to be rooted in economic activity rather than just business presence, since physical presence requirements undermine taxation in source countries where income is actually generated. Brazil, India, China, Rwanda, and Zambia supported this stance and pushed for source-based taxation, arguing for the Convention to correct long-standing imbalances in taxation and root fairness in real value creation rather than the location of multinational headquarters.154 See Tax Justice Network’s briefing on how residence-based taxation disadvantages Global South countries.155
- Taxation of high-net-worth individuals: Discussions on Article 5, which focuses on the taxation of high net-worth individuals (HNWIs), centered on curbing tax avoidance and evasion and strengthening transparency and information-sharing. Countries differed on whether taxation of HNWIs should be left as a matter of domestic regulation.156 The Bahamas, Jamaica, Singapore, and Hungary emphasized national sovereignty and cautioned against detailed rules, while Brazil and France pushed for stronger transparency requirements and more effective taxation of HNWIs.157
- Transparency and alignment with existing frameworks: In Nairobi, several Global North countries pushed to limit the Convention’s scope by warning against “duplication” and insisting that it should remain consistent with existing tax treaties.158 Switzerland and Poland, for example, raised concerns that the new Convention could conflict with existing double taxation agreements, signaling a preference to preserve the status quo.159 On Article 6 (transparency and administrative assistance), countries such as Switzerland, Austria, Japan, and the UK emphasized safeguards and confidentiality in ways that would narrow transparency obligations. In contrast, Zambia and other members of the African Group called for stronger cooperation measures—including automatic information exchange—in alignment with the Convention’s Terms of Reference.160 In August, Kenya rightly noted that “Calling for complementarity [with existing frameworks] is calling for the status quo to remain.”161
Despite these challenges, the Nairobi negotiations saw growing momentum on some African Group proposals and other potentially transformative areas. For instance, negotiations on Article 11 (capacity-building and technical assistance) were especially constructive. Many states reinforced the need for a stand-alone capacity building article, with some calling to support small island developing states in particular.162 Discussions on Article 9 (sustainable development) were also initially promising, with states from all regions affirming the need to establish stronger links between tax justice and gender equality, climate justice, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).163
Global Advocacy Spotlight
Global Solidarity Levies Task Force: Voluntary commitments to advance taxation for climate finance
Even orthodox economic actors and neoliberal institutions, such as ministries of finance and the IMF, appear to be increasingly recognizing the essential role of taxation in raising both domestic and international climate finance. Central to this momentum has been the launch of the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force at COP28 in 2023, which is co-chaired by France, Kenya, and Barbados.164 However, the initiative remains a voluntary effort backed by just 14 countries, and it is formally partnered with the likes of the IMF and World Bank—institutions whose policy advice has long undermined progressive taxation and promoted regressive taxation measures in the Global South.
While the Task Force has helped to bring the conversation around tax-based, debt-free public climate finance into the mainstream, governments and civil society must keep their eyes on securing binding, mandatory commitments to tax polluters, particularly through the UN Tax Convention. Small coalitions of the willing are no substitute for a multilateral rights-based framework—one that clearly lays out the obligation of the wealthiest and most polluting actors to pay their ecological debts to the Global South and people on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
148 Arimbi Wahono (2024) Rights-based tax justice: A framework for a progressive, feminist, ecologically just, and decolonial approach to taxation, WEDO, Financial Transparency Coalition, Center for Economic and Social Rights & Shared Planet; Andrea Larios Campos (2025) Global Tax Governance from a Feminist Perspective, DAWN Feminist.
149 United States Mission to the United Nations (2025) Statement at the Session for the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation.
150 Tamra Gilbertson (2017) Carbon Pricing: A critical perspective for community resistance, Indigenous Environmental Network & Climate Justice Alliance; Eurodad (2025) UN Tax Convention negotiations kick off in New York.
151 Tax Justice Network (2025) State of Tax Justice 2025.
152 Center for Economic and Social Rights (2025) Untitled LinkedIn post covering INC negotiations on Day 3 of August sessions.
153 Ibid.
154 Center for Economic and Social Rights (2025) Untitled LinkedIn post covering INC negotiations on 10 November 2025.
155 Tax Justice Network (2025) Source and Residence Taxation.
156 International Institute for Sustainable Development (2025) 3rd Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (INC3): Highlights and images for 10 November 2025.
157 Center for Economic and Social Rights (2025) Untitled LinkedIn post covering INC negotiations on 10 November 2025.
158 Center for Economic and Social Rights (2025) Untitled LinkedIn post covering INC negotiations on 11 November 2025.
159 Center for Economic and Social Rights (2025) Untitled LinkedIn post covering INC negotiations on 10 November 2025.
160 Center for Economic and Social Rights (2025) Untitled LinkedIn post covering INC negotiations on 11 November 2025.
161 Center for Economic and Social Rights (2025) Untitled LinkedIn post covering INC negotiations on Day 2 of August sessions.
162 International Institute for Sustainable Development (2025) 3rd Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (INC3): Highlights and images for 14 November 2025.
163 Center for Economic and Social Rights (2025) Untitled LinkedIn post covering INC negotiations on 12 November 2025.
164 Global Solidarity Levies Task Force (2024) Scaling Solidarity: Progress on Global Solidarity Levies.