The Chilean Government launches: “Social dialogues: tax reform with the people”
For the first time ever, a call has been issued to people throughout Chile, in a decentralized manner, to help draw up the principles that will guide the tax reform that the Chilean government will promote in the coming months.
Treasury Minister Mario Marcel and Treasury Undersecretary Claudia Sanhueza launched the session “Social dialogues: tax reform with the people”, thus fulfilling the commitment to open up spaces for engaging with the public in order to jointly define the principles of what is considered one of the most important reforms for the future of Chile.
“President Gabriel Boric aims to implement a new fiscal pact during his mandate. I fully share this presidential vision, not only because we need income to finance the government’s program, but also because we’ve had many tax fluctuations in Chile. Instability in this area isn’t good for the country,” Minister Marcel stated.
To this end, the Treasury Ministry has organized these dialogues, so that “we will all have the opportunity to talk about what should be changed in our tax system. Up to now, there’s been a lot of talk about how to obtain resources and collect more tax; however, there’s been insufficient dialogue on structure, logic and principles,” the minister added.
Undersecretary Sanhueza explained that “social dialogues are part of what we’ve called ‘a new fiscal pact’. It’s a process that seeks the convergence of areas like the Welfare State, sustainability and entrepreneurship, to name a few. In this framework, the design of the tax reform project that we’ve working on will allow a historic rapprochement with the Chilean people through dialogue.”
She also added that “our government’s tax reform is the response that we’ll give to citizens to achieve greater economic development, to reduce inequality between people, and to set new parameters so that everyone pays the taxes that correspond to them.”
Call process
Civil society organizations interested in participating in Social Dialogues can register at www.reformatributaria.cl. They will subsequently be assigned a specific time and date to attend a public hearing or citizen meeting, which could be face-to-face or online.
It should be noted that, in order to carry out these citizen meetings, the Consortium of Chilean State Universities (Consorcio de Universidades del Estado de Chile, CUECh), in line with its mission, has made available its facilities throughout the country, providing employee support to facilitate coordination.
As the meetings take place during April and part of May, a team will work on systematizing the results to generate data during May, and then present the tax proposal before the end of the first half of the year.