Tunis/Tunisia — The Tunisian tax system favours the unfairest forms of taxation, penalises the country's middle and lower classes, in addition to depriving the state of significant income, this is the finding made by the report published Wednesday by the anti-poverty organization "Oxfam" Tunisia.
The 46-page report highlights the contribution of the Tunisian tax system to the deepening of inequalities among Tunisians.
The report also dwells on the deterioration of public services, noting that "under the impetus of austerity policies encouraged by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the shares of education and health expenditure in the state budget fell sharply between 2011 and 2019, from 26.6% to 17.7% for education and from 6.6% to 5% for health respectively".
For Oxfam, the pandemic, which has exposed the fragility of the public health system, is an opportunity for the government to carry out an ambitious reform of the tax system in order to meet its obligation of fiscal justice.
The report proposes recommendations for initiating a real dialogue on the issue and introducing in-depth reforms to the Tunisian tax system.
