Members Highlights

On 10 September, the German Taxpayers’ Association celebrated its 70th birthday in Berlin in front of around 700 invited guests from politics, business, science, culture and with its members.
The keynote speaker was none other than Federal Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel. Her presence was important in several respects. In her speech, she praised the work of the Taxpayers’ Association, she stressed the necessity of tax cuts which was a great vote of confidence in our work.

On October 23, the National Taxpayers Union celebrated its 50th Anniversary with a gala dinner in Washington, DC featuring more than 300 guests from the organization’s past and present. Lawmakers, state governors, and other public officials were in attendance to view a video on the history of NTU — including an interview from the year 1974 of the organization’s founder on the famous American television program “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.”

According to the calculations made by Contribuables Associés, the French taxpayers’ association, the ratio between public expenditure (State, local authorities, social security, European Union) and the wealth created in France (GDP) is 55.6% in 2019.

Tax Freedom Day in Austria was August 5th, according to the Austrian Economics Center.
Tax Freedom Day was July 1st in 1976. Since then, the tax burden has grown significantly, pushing the date to August 20th in 2001 and August 19th in 2015.

July 18th is when the Swedish taxpayers celebrated their Tax Freedom Day in 2018 according to the Swedish Taxpayers Association.

International Governmental Organization (IGO) Watch sent a letter to Finance Ministers across the G20 urging the officials to oppose any attempts to weaponize global conversations about digital commerce to tax tech companies.

Many thanks to the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance and Tax and Super Australia, especially to Tim Andrews, for hosting and organizing the 17th World Taxpayers’ Conference & 7th Friedman Conference in Sydney in May 2019.  More than 460 people from over 30 countries attended the conference (including four delegates from South-America) thanks in part to scholarships offered by the National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Tax Reform and Atlas Network.

According to Asociación de Contribuyentes del Perú, the taxpayers in Peru are working 135 days to pay for the income tax, value-added tax, social security contributions and other local taxes.

In celebration of World IP day, an international coalition of 77 organizations from 39 countries along with Property Rights Alliance has launched an open letter addressed to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Director General Dr. Francis Gurry, urging WIPO to double its efforts in advising governments to protect intellectual property rights.

Thanks to Taxpayers’ Alliance work, senior staff leaving public sector roles will soon have payouts capped at £95,000.  The Treasury announced that it is implementing the cap on public sector ‘exit payments’. This is a huge victory for the TPA – and it is, of course, good news for taxpayers.