Every Australian, wherever they work in Australia, whatever our work tasks and whatever our working arrangements deserve physical and psychologically healthy and safe work, it's our right. Today I'd like to tell you about the work to provide greater clarity for employers around the duties for work health and safety and workers compensation in psychological health and safety. Our public discourse has changed. Clare referred to the changing nature of work will our attitudes to psychological injuries have thank goodness changed? How many of you have yourself or have a loved one who has a psychological injury caused by work or non-work? Doesn't it make it real for all of us to know that health and safety professionals we need to drive the charge to make this a thing of the past? Thank goodness Australia is now a more compassionate community. There is de-stigmatisation of some conditions particularly anxiety and depression and our footballers and other heroes have done lots to de-stigmatise that in Australian community. I'd say we have some significant challenges still ahead for us on psychosis and some of the more serious psychological injuries. We now recognise that work-related psychological injuries are real. They're not a sign of weakness. It can happen to any of us if the stresses are prolonged or severe enough. Importantly they're preventable. We know what causes them and we know how to fix them and they're compensable. There are more effective treatments. The advert of better medications, behaviour-based therapies can change the prognosis significantly and there's been a great move towards fit certificates that we should all applaud where we look at ability rather than disability and do all that we can to encourage people back to safe work as early as they can. And we all know the recognition of the great business case for creating psychologically healthy and safe work. But sometimes our attitudes in communities remain complex and sometimes contradictory. Earlier in the year I had the great pleasure of speaking with a number of people I consider my mentors and thought leaders in this space and the wonderful Nick Glosier who some of you may know from university in Sydney and I were talking about this conflicted space and he said many managers want to manage health and safety better. They really want to support the people. Nobody goes to work wanting to damage their people but they're concerned. They're worried about what's the cost, what's actually going to cost me to fix it. Might I be held responsible for something that I didn't cause and might I if I ask might I actually be making the situation worse. I think we can all in our own workplaces and our histories think that these concerns are real and we need to address them. Work related psychological injuries despite our great changing attitudes and our better treatment remain a problem. We know that there's certain sectors that are experienced more severely and that there are certain types of hazards and risks which increase the propensity to create a to have a psychological injury. Work related psychological injury claims are very serious and they're very expensive both at a human and financial level and they cost the Australian economy enormous amounts of money. It's wasted effort. We can and should be doing better. It's I think salutary to think about what's going on. This survey that was released in 2017 shows some of those insights about the difference in attitudes and resistance points for physical versus psychological injuries. You can see the very stark and rather concerning difference in the barriers if you have a physical injury versus a psychological. And I think some of this goes to the point that Nick made earlier that I quoted about the confusion about what and how they can help. So there's calls for an integrated and systematic approach. Professor Nicky Ellis who many of you will know has been a forefront leader in this thinking. There's an increasing interest in the biopsychosocial approach and any of you who look closely at our jurisdictional websites will know the increasing information and that they're providing to us on this which says we need to think about the whole person and all of the factors that might relate to their psychological injury. And we are seeing schemes broaden their assessment criteria and including biomedical and administrative claims data and looking at psychosocial data. But we need to keep the support going. We must also provide them with the support to address the psychological risk factors. So challenges remain for us all as health and safety professionals on how to design safe work and say systems of work for at risk individuals. We don't step away that this can sometimes be challenging. And as Nick was talking to me earlier in the year he recognises the elephant in the room that we will all have to deal with is that how we respond to situations at work is shaped by our experiences and our perceptions of event. So when somebody has had negative experiences both inside and outside the work site to some extent we're primed and we might be over reactive to what other people might perceive as relatively benign experiences. And I think we can all relate to that ourselves and it goes to the heart of the exposure. If it's repeated they begin to be primed to things that may have not triggered them in the past but now will. But we don't always agree on what causes work-related stress. And I think it's salutary to look at this study that I found that was a large international piece that looked at what employers thought were the big issues that were challenging both in how work is done and what were the pressures personal and work related. And what workers thought whilst there's high levels of agreement there's some interesting levels of disagreement. And there lies one of our challenges. If we go in the process to identify and assess risks and we only ask one person perhaps the owner of the business and we fail to consult the people who are doing the work. We will get one answer. If we only ask workers we'll get a different one. What we need to do is ask everybody who's involved in the work what are the big issues here and importantly what can we do about them. Safe Work Australia recognised that despite the plethora of information out there some employers remain confused and in preparing the guide that I'm going to talk about the WorkSafe colleagues around the country and I had a look at the resources and we collated over five pages of hyperlinks to amazing resources produced by the regulators and the Workers' Compensation authorities, groups like Beyond Blue and Information on the Heads Up website. Fantastic material. But in fact that might even be part of our problem. How does an organisation sift through that huge volume of information and find the bit that's right for them. So it's really good to hear Claire and I believe Queensland has a similar initiative where they're going to help make that process easier for workplaces so that the pre-filtering of information occurs and it drives them to the areas where it's most useful. So we were hearing repeatedly through our consultations about some of the areas of confusion. It came at its heart down to what are my legal requirements? What must I do to be found compliant? If the WorkSafe inspectors come, what would they be looking for? And what, if I want to go beyond the minimum and I want to strive to best practice, what does that look like and how is it different from minimum compliance? How can I identify these psychosocial hazards? What even are they and are there free and simple ways to assess risks or do I need to employ a very expensive consultant? The answer is no to that. What are the most effective and practical control measures and is there evidence to base them up? And then how if somebody is hurt, do I support my workers to get back safely, as quickly as they can? And what are the reasonable practical adjustments you expect me as an employer to making? And where in all of this does mental health promotion and general health promotion fit in terms of minimum compliance and best practice? So, Safe Work Australian members recognise there was a need and have over the last 18 months developed a guidance. This document is one piece of the puzzle. It's not the whole piece. What it does is will provide authoritative guidance to PCBU's and employers about the work health and safety duties under the work health and safety acts and the duties under workers compensation acts. It does not replace everything but it provides a clear authoritative platform from which you can build and move beyond compliance and then using other guidance out there practice. So, the guide is for employers and PCBU's. In the future we expect that there will be additional material for workers and others. And whilst there's some information about workers' responsibilities in the document, it's fairly restricted. It includes a whole range of information that's typically in a guide, what's at scope, but it has three important areas that it looks on. First of all, it takes an integrated and systematic approach so it starts with what the prevention duties are and the way to use a risk management approach. It talks about the need for early intervention and those elements that are obligatory under health and safety and workers compensation laws and those which are better practice. And it touches on the duties for the provision of workers compensation, supporting at work and return to work. It does this fairly briefly because there's wonderful material on all the jurisdictions websites already on that. And it provides some clarity about how workplace health promotion fits in with that context. You may have noticed that there's a whole plethora of words that are used, are we saying? Psychological injuries, are we saying? Mental illness, mental health conditions. So, one of the things that Safe Work Australia decided is that we'd put a glossary at the back which clearly defined those terms and what we mean by them. There was a deliberate intention and decision to use the term work-related psychological injuries because that's the compensable term. But we shouldn't get too tense about this. Basically, we're all talking about the same things. The National Guide is quite different from any other document that Safe Work Australia members have developed. They recognise that and this probably resonates with you. Out there in real workplaces, there isn't actually an artificial divide between work health and safety and early intervention and return to work. In fact, you're probably all doing it as a totally integrated approach already.  So they said, okay, we're going to try for the first time to have a document that includes all of those in the One Guide. It does make it long and we don't apologise for that because there'll be other supplementary material which is shorter and where you can go and get more specific information. I'd like to draw your attention to the inner circle. And for me, this goes to the heart of it. There is a lot of information out there on psychological health and safety and there are many proponents that are saying there's an absence of laws that psychological injury isn't covered. There's lack of clarity. And we would say they're incorrect. The existing health and safety legislation includes psychological health. It's already there under an obligation. But we realise that perhaps we hadn't drawn it out clearly enough and that this guide might go some way to actually clarifying duties. But at its heart is the need to design good work and safe systems of work, to apply a risk management process, to monitor and review that that process has been effective, to provide the training, information and supervision required and to show leadership and management commitment to psychological health and safety. And as always, to consultation, cooperation and coordination between all those that have a duty. Those elements apply in every single section, whether it's prevention, early intervention and recover. We all know this is second nature to you all, that there is a legal duty for PCBUs to manage the health and safety risks so far as this is reasonably practical. And for workers to take reasonable care of their own and others' health and safety. Employers to provide the appropriate support should an incident occur. I also wanted to take the time to actually put up something you've all probably seen before, which is the reference to the office's due diligence. And I've been a bit cheeky here because I've inserted psychological. It's in there, but perhaps it might help provide some clarity to insert that. So when you're going back and being the champion back in your own workplaces, to remind your officers that they have a duty, to have an up-to-date knowledge of all work health and safety matters, including psychological matters, they need to understand the nature of their operations, however they're changing, including knowing what the psychosocial hazards are. They need to make and use, and check they're being used, resources and processes to control those risks. And they need to actually have the systems for collecting information to monitor that things are going on. And I notice a changing debate, which isn't yet settled, but about the need to include psychological instance in your own voluntary reporting systems. It's not yet obligatory under law, but I'd say get ahead of the game, and when you're creating your own systems back in your own workplace, put in the capacity to collect psychological incidents. And we need to verify the provision of those resources. So reminding you all that in terms of this space, so far as recently practical applies, so you in helping the PCB use, need to get them to ask themselves, are there reasonably foreseeable risks in this workplace? And I think we could all go back to our own workplaces and say, yep, either looking at past events or into the future, there are. Could serious harm occur? And they probably could. Are there known effective controls? Absolutely. And are the costs of implementing those controls reasonable? In all likelihood, they are. But beyond that, one of my colleagues last night when I was talking to her about this said, and don't forget to remind them about the long-term benefits to their business in actually investing proactively in psychological health and safety. So we all know the benefits of doing it well. And I think it's salutary to say that the mental health and wellness programs will deliver extra benefits on top of it, but they are desirable extras. You need to ensure that our workplaces understand that wellness programs are not a substitute for identifying, assessing and controlling psychological risks. They're great to do. Don't let me, you know, I absolutely support them. They're wonderful things, but first, check that you've controlled the risks. So the same risk management process applies to physical and psychological hazards and risks. That's something that SafeWork members wanted to get out there very clearly. You don't need to go and create a new process if you don't want to. But you do, you can apply the standard risk management assessment, assessing, controlling and reviewing. But I might just note that for this particular group of hazards, if you know what the hazards are, and you've already got some great ideas of controlling them, you don't necessarily have to go through a whole assessment process. Don't wait. Implement the controls and check they're effective. I think sometimes we get bound up in our risk assessment process to get the intention of this was to control the risks and not just go through a paperwork process. There are sound underpinnings to the National Guide and if any of you wants to read more deeply, they're in that list of academics. This space is not new. There has been work going on since the 1970s, epidemiological work on this space. We know what the hazards are and we know that they cause serious health problems if they're not addressed. The guide includes a list of some common psychosocial hazards. It's not, it won't cover everything. You will need to apply it and think about the context of your own working environment. But there are some things which are pretty standard you should be looking at. High and low demands. Excessive physical demands, cognitive or emotional demands. And I think if you cast your mind around in your own work sites you can think about times where there's too much time pressure.  But it can also be stressful if you have insufficient work to do. So look the other side as well. If people are bored and there's monotonous work that too can be a potential stressful. We need to look at the level of job control. The literature tells us very clearly if you have high demands and low job control and low support you will be moving into a position called high job strain and the likelihood of a psychological injury will significantly increase. If there's high responsibility without appropriate control most of us like to have responsibility but who likes to have it when we don't actually have a say on how things are done? Not me. We need to think about the level of support and broaden how we think about this. Very often the first thing if we talk about it in workplaces people say are my colleagues being friendly can I talk to them about my problems. That's emotional support or my supervisor will talk to me. But I'd also like you to challenge your workplaces to look about the other kinds of support also informational support. Do your people have the information they need when and how they need it in the form that is called informational support. Does the equipment work right? Who of us has had a situation where the IT system has crashed or the car has broken down that we need to travel to visit a client with? If the equipment that allows you to do your job is malfunctioning that causes huge stress. And the research shows that it's actually extremely irritating for people to know it could have easily been predicted and something done about it. So then to workplace relations and conflict. We all know that this is often where it gets shown in workplaces that the other things will set if you like they're the antecedents but the crisis point will be reflected with somebody yelling or crying or being very distressed. So turning your attention to the working relationships of clients' families or supervisors. Claire's mentioned the powerful stressors that being bullied, harassed or occupational violence showed and when the Safe Work Australian members were considering the guide, Victoria urged the members to think about secondary exposures like those to police officers to ambulance officers where they're being repeatedly exposed to distressing situations. Low recognition and compared to the effort. There's a theory called effort reward imbalance and we know that it is particularly stressful if you're putting in lots of effort and your perception is you're not being appropriately rewarded for the effort. This can be financial effort, a reward or just recognition. Wherever there's poor organisational justice and there's a lot of work to be done on the road working remotely or in isolated working environments and don't forget the powerful potential stressors of working in physically dangerous or unpleasant working environments. So whilst we think that we tend to traditionally turn our attention to psychological, you know, to demand and control support, you know, on some earlier documents and I put working at height and he said what's that got to do with health and safety or working around unguarded machinery and I said I reckon that if you're working at heights without appropriate protection you're going to be a little bit tense and he thought about it and then agreed. So the guide recognises that individuals may vary, some days will have good days some days will have bad days but over time if our responses may vary there are limits in the guide. It isn't uncontained it's only so far as reasonably practical and that the employer must make reasonable adjustments if somebody has a psychological injury. But there's a challenge that they also need to concurrently comply with other legislation that operates in the space such as anti-discrimination. So the guide says use the hierarchy of control if you want to and it recognises that you will need in all reality in this space a combination of risk controls unlike some other areas where perhaps you could find one you're going to need a collection of them. The first is to think about elimination. This is a little tough in a space we acknowledge and there are less examples of pure elimination I'll put some of them up there but your purpose there is to actually look if there's some elements of the job that can be completely removed so the person isn't being exposed and being stressed and perhaps it's about better workload management even eliminating unnecessary tasks and one that's slightly controversial is that you might be needing to ask in your organisation are you the best person you need to be delivering the service? Is somebody else better equipped to have the plant and equipment and resources to deliver this rather than you? And then you know a practical issue that we were talking about when developing the guide around occupational violence can you completely eliminate that risk by using remote payments? I wanted to put this slide up here and you may be wondering why. In 2016 I had the great privilege of being invited by the Dimaru Aboriginal organisation to go and do two-way learning with them. The Dimaru ranges provide health and safety in North East Ireland in some of the most challenging and difficult working environments in Australia. I went up with some preconceptions about their health and safety, most were proved incorrect. I thought that they wouldn't understand psychological health and safety, they got it. What they taught me and reminded me was that job design, so that elimination process does not have to be complicated. So here's some ranges out doing some work in the Indigenous protected areas. So this slide, on my very first day, so I hadn't had any influence at this point, I turned up at Dimaru and sat in on Toolbox and I was blown away because without even knowing it, these guys and English is their fourth or fifth language, there's many different clans there, they were doing job design. They just asked at the beginning of each day before they went out to work, what do we have to do? Where do we have to do it? How are we going to do it? Who's going to work together? As workers, they collaborated and planned the day's job, including the difficult tasks. And you'll note there's something called Baru discussions there. Baru are the crocodiles. So they then thought, well, there was a crocodile out on the loose there and they actually had a whole discussion that then that went on what were the physical risks associated with handling crocodiles. It was an eye-opening example. And then lastly, we think about administrative controls and often in health and safety in this space, the people start with that, they start with policies and procedures. I'm going to be a bit challenging here and say policies and procedures in this space are like planned operating manuals. They just describe the way the work should be undertaken to be safe. They don't inherently make it safe. So we do need our policies and procedures but don't rely on them. You're going to have to do the other upstream things as well. There are opportunities to think about how to use job rotation and I would challenge us all to think more deeply about effective training for managers and staff around workload management, work redesign and personnel management and dealing with aggressive clients and the like. PPE is an interesting one. When I was thinking about what we might put in the guide here, my colleagues in the inspectors in Victoria and New South Wales and Queensland and others said, well, you do all the PPE you do for physical stressors, risks because you want to manage those. But actually there's some other things you might want to think that are context-specific for workers as well. And in fact, the eye trackers, the Dimmeru Aboriginal Rangers use that so that when they're out working alone out a long way from the base, they know exactly where their workers are and if they're late. There are alternative risk management models and Safe Worker Australian members recognise this. You don't have to use the risk management model. You can use others, but we're saying that just be aware that you're actually truly meeting the requirements under the Act. And I put this up here to provide some clarity. So for us, primary prevention, secondary prevention and tertiary prevention, you can map it to the hierarchy of control and to the secondary and to recovery and supporting recovery at work. There's also other models that talk about organisational, environmental and individual level controls and you can also map those, if you like, onto the hierarchy of control and other models. So it's not one or another, but pick your model and apply it systematically and ensure that you've met your duty. The guide also outlines employers' duties for early intervention and workers' compensation. And there's a plethora of material on this. None of it is new in the guide, but it does bring it together into one authoritative space. But wherever people work around Australia and whatever the workers' compensation arrangements, there are huge amounts of similarity. So the guide captures the obligations across Australia, but you may need to go to the specific requirements in your state if you want more details. So, putting it all together, it's not that difficult. We need to help our employers identify the hazards and risks, including the psychological hazards and risks and chemical hazards and risks and physical hazards and risks. We need to support them to implement effective risk management, including work design, redesign and workload management to monitor the impact of those controls, to show leadership and commitment, to develop and use policies. Policies are no good if they're sitting on the shelf and they're not actually built into normal business processes and to train workers. Our workers need to actively participate in risk assessments and implement agreed controls to complete and implement the training that they've been given and to comply with policies and procedures. I'd also say that although it can be challenging, we as workers need to tell our managers if we're struggling. Employers can't make reasonable modifications if they don't know we're struggling. So we need to tell people and to share if we need help. So flipping it now also back onto the other side, thinking about a corrective focus. So something has gone wrong. What's an organisational systems focus that's required? The PCBEU employer needs to set up effective reporting mechanisms that includes for the incidents that will tell them what is going on in their workplace to train their staff to work load and stress management to investigate proactively concerns wherever they are raised and take action to intervene early whenever their people are saying they're experiencing distress appoint contact officers and actively support return to work and where possible remain at work. And our workers, we need to report problems. We need to report them and use EAP and actively participate in our return to work programs. There are lots of resources out there. Here's some of them that will supplement the guide. Go to any of your jurisdictional websites. There are fantastic material available. One of the questions I get asked is about risk assessment tools and draw your attention to a free service published on the Queensland website called People at Work and that was co-funded by ComCare, Safe Work Australia members and Queensland. There are lots of different risk assessment tools. This one just happens to be free and has normative data for over 10,000 people. There are also some wonderful documents out there in terms of our best practice approach to move you beyond compliance into better practice. It's salarity to finish by saying we have come a very long way. So whenever you get despairing, think about how far we've come and with your effort, collectively, we'll keep making progress.


The Nagaloka Buddhist Center is located in the arts district in Portland, Maine. This provides a unique opportunity to the Sangha in Nagaloka by drawing on the diverse population in the heart of downtown Portland. We're in the arts district, we're in a busy community, and so what we are attracting is some young men now coming to our community. It's physically in a great location as far as downtown and being in the arts district and being able to come here and meet local people. Coming here to Nagaloka and coming back to Portland, I'm originally from Maryland, I found that Portland, the people of Portland are a really tight knit group of people and maybe it's a better quality of life up here I'm not sure. However, it has allowed me to open up within my mind and within my heart especially and to want to connect. I think the people that come to Nagaloka are representative of the population of Portland because everybody's so open-minded and very friendly and welcoming, so very much like Portland as a whole I think. The Sangha in Nagaloka takes full advantage of its location in the arts district. The first Friday of every month, the downtown district of Portland has, well it's a part of the artistic and a part of the main college of art. All the galleries are open in Portland on the first Friday, so people can go around, every gallery is open, but actually this building is open, they exhibit art on the second floor, plus we open our bookstore and we open Nagaloka for people that want to come in to just see what it's like here to be in a Buddhist community. Geographically it's great and I think it does it, I come here and I get inspired and I walk through the downtown and go out to dinner or meet friends, it's a nice way to start the evening or the weekend. On April 4th, 2014, the Sangha hosted Nagabody, a long time order member from England during a first Friday art walk when he gave a talk on mindfulness. Nagabody gave his talk on the first Friday too, so Nagabody talked about mindfulness which was really great and we had, I don't know, probably 20-30 people here that evening that just, a lot of them just came to listen to Nagabody give his talk and so here we are, this little community in Portland, Maine and we have somebody like Nagabody coming and giving a talk. It's quite wonderful. Our whole life is devoted to kind of holding a tight grip on this idea of a self. Just imagine if you can loosen that, what might get released? The energy, the creativity, the capacity to engage and relate. The people who come to Nagaloka appreciate its connection with the Portland community and find that that connection enhances their practice. I think the Sangha helps to reaffirm mindfulness in just my daily practice when I get to meet up every week with people that share the same values and really just helps to remind me of what I'm trying to do with my practice. The kinds of conversations that we have here at Nagaloka are focused on what we're doing, what we're thinking right now. They're practical, they're everyday and this is a wonderful opportunity for us to connect our practice to our everyday life. It's really about again being interconnected and really finding a way to relate to one another through mindfulness which blows my mind sometimes thinking how again it can happen in this small group. What can it do outside of this, out of the center, in this small city?


What's up guys? I'm Brian Sikawa. You're watching He Spoke Style and today three ways to dress for the airport First up is my go-to airport outfit. It's simple.  Porter Black sapphiana leather tons of room and a perfect complement to a casual look like this Well, unfortunately, you may not always be able to dress casually on the plane And this next look is an outfit for the person who needs to rush right to a business meeting or an event of some sort If you've got to wear a suit on the plane Make sure it's one with a fabric that does not wrinkle easily and ideally a fabric that has a little bit of stretch to it This suit is by Z Zenya classic gray windowpane pattern spread collar shirt from Al Bazaar in Milan and paired with a Brooks Brothers BB number three reptile my Rolex Datejust on the wrist and Double monk straps are by Paul Evans suitcase is the Remova salsa deluxe. This is not the international version I'm really glad that I invested in this particular carry-on. I use it on pretty much every flight that I take it holds a lot It's very easy to zip around the airport with and it's remover So it has a great style factor as well. Finally, we have the summer vacation airport outfit I don't know about you, but when I go on vacation I like to try and capture that feeling of stylish travel that you see in old photos where men are dressed very stylishly So that's why I have on a blazer here. This is a linen blazer from suit supply Casual underneath with just a simple and classic black polo from J crew. Yes, you can wear a polo shirt underneath a blazer Cotton trousers are by ring jacket Panama hat is by Homero or Tega on my wrist Is the Vacheron Constantin tradition L and this look is anchored by a pair of braided leather Allen Edmonds tassel overs This model is called the Palm Beach, which quite unfortunately is not available anymore The leather bag I'm carrying is by Frank Clegg the signature travel duffel and shrunken green leather Extremely luxurious very stylish and also very practical Complete outfit details as always are down below in the description. Leave a comment Let me know which look you liked best thumbs up. Please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and until next time Thanks for watching and stay tailing


Welcome to another Dogecoin update the news just keeps coming out right so we're covering this but we've got some penny stock videos coming soon as well so don't worry about that but also we need to talk about this as well so Mark Cuban has also started to say that he would buy Dogecoin over a lottery ticket we'll go into this information and research we've got for you in this video I've got to say I'm not a financial advisor I'm a business teacher in my day life but I'm by no means an expert in the stock market or crypto so we'll go into this information for you if you could leave a like on the video that'd be fantastic as it gets up into the search results and then we get into the search results of people looking at Dogecoin right so thank you for any support on the channel that you can do to help get the videos up there in the search results right we'll go into the information today now as we know Mark Cuban is a very very successful entrepreneur he's actually was you know he's part he's part of Shark Tank which is a fantastic series and ultimately he's got a lot of credibility in the sense that when what he says people listen right so let's listen to what he said about Dogecoin before we do that I just want to mention the fact that Dogecoin is actually being starting to trend again on Twitter starting to trend again on Twitter now this Dogecoin phenomenon is happening because of the variety of the meme kind of aspect of it in terms of people are sharing it around it's getting it's getting that approach of just this marketing kind of genius in a sense the fact that loads of people share it around because of the meme aspect of it so it's going viral right so you've got this viral aspect to Dogecoin because of you know kind of jerk meme side to it but a lot of people are now knowing about Dogecoin and it's building up a lot of awareness in people's minds and also not only have you had Elon Musk tweeting about it not only have you had Mark Cuban tweeting about it you've now had Snoop Dogg that's actually tweeted about it which has posted a meme here and this one has got 158,000 likes and 33,000 retweets here so Snoop Dogg's even been talking about Dogecoin so and many of those are also talking about it there are influences and you know have a lot of following many of the people are talking about Dogecoin now we'll go into what Mark Cuban has said in in particular before I do that just if you can support the channel in any way do leave a like on a video subscribe to the channel we're trying to reach to 10,000 subscribers as fast as we can so in any way you can help out to reach that 10,000 subscriber goal we'll be greatly appreciated but I'll get right back into the information for you so we've had this recent article that's on CNBC it says Mark Cuban I'd buy Dogecoin over a lottery ticket lottery tickets are worse than any investment going to Mark Cuban so it's not a huge endorsement of Dogecoin in the sense that is just saying that you know anything's better than a lottery ticket right in terms of an investment which is right in that right he's correcting that in the sense that you know investments are there to make you money over time whereas a lottery ticket you've got a one in million million chance of actually winning anything significant so it's it's unbelievable that really if you think about it so he's correct in saying that you know investments are much better than than spending money on lottery tickets you if you spend 20 pound on the lottery every or 20 dollars or whatever on the lottery every every month or whatever you might as well put that into the your investments and let let it compound over time now obviously you would diversify in your investment so you can have crypto you can have penny stocks by the way we talk about penny stocks and growth stocks in this video not just crypto so if that sounds interesting to you then do subscribe but he's right in what he's saying here at Mark Cuban is in the sense that you know it is better than a lottery ticket at least but but it's also not an endorsement of Dogecoin itself which he hasn't gone that far but he's talking about it so you know just the fact that you've got a prominent figure such as Mark Cuban talking about Dogecoin this is a good thing this shows that Dogecoin is really starting to get into the mainstream now you know whether it's good or bad press you know its publicity and I think Dogecoin is getting a lot of that at the minute and it tends to be more positive than negative as well so just to read through the article further on CNBC here again CNBC mainstream news article now this wouldn't be covered by CNBC if it wasn't you know Elon Musk if it wasn't Mark Cuban if it wasn't these sorts of people talking about Dogecoin you know the more of these credible people that talk about Dogecoin and it's not exactly knocking Dogecoin right he's not saying that it's it's terrible he's just saying but he's not saying that it's fantastic either right but it's anytime these prominent figures that cover Dogecoin you know Elon Musk, Mark Cuban these these areas right it tends to get picked up by the mainstream news and loads of people who watch the mainstream news then actually you know hear about Dogecoin and that's in their mind and then that builds brand awareness it has this effect this overrunning effect over here so going through this what is it said so through billionaire investor Mark Cuban is warned people to be cautious of the cryptocurrency actually he also said the digital assets from digital goods to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will be the future of business so he's saying that you know you got to be careful with Dogecoin but essentially if you think of the social arbitrage and how much it's becoming well known I think that you know there is potential for Dogecoin and Cuban has invested in cryptocurrency himself both in business and personal in fact Cuban has an extensive cryptocurrency wallet which he shared on it's shared in Tuesday's Reddit he earns all these coins here he says what so what about Musk talked about Dogecoin he said the cryptocurrency was created as a parody in 2013 but it surged over 50% on Thursday after Elon tweeted his support and also had the attention of Reddit group that Dogecoin was based on the Doge meme which carrying on on this article it says here still even the surge Dogecoin is only priced at 0.0462 it's actually slightly higher than that and it says if I had to choose between buying a lottery ticket and Dogecoin I would buy Dogecoin Cuban tweeted that on Wednesday and he said but please don't ask me to choose between it and anything else so in one sense he said at least it's better than the lottery ticket in another sense that he's not fully behind Dogecoin right so his lottery tickets are worse than any investment according to Cuban indeed the odds of winning the recent billion dollar mega millions jackpot were one in nearly 302.6 million so it's interesting that Cuban is covering Dogecoin and it's some interesting information in this video right the fact that such a prominent individual it's covering Dogecoin is absolutely fantastic there the fact that that's been done again is not giving an overwhelming endorsement of Dogecoin is just saying that you know he would buy this over a lottery ticket at least and so it's not a overwhelmingly fantastic endorsement by any means if if at any right but it's interesting that you have an individual such as Mark Cuban talking about what was considered a jerk cryptocurrency but is now becoming more serious as more and more people become invested in it now I've got to say thank you for watching the video as well so I do appreciate all the support do like the video to get up into that YouTube search results and I will see everybody in the next one


Good morning. I'm Teresa Clark, and I'm the chairman and the executive editor of Africa.com. Thank you for joining us today for this conversation on tax in motion. We have an excellent panel of academics, policymakers, and in particular a minister from Zambia who's going to provide us with some very useful insights as we tackle this very complicated question that we're facing at the beginning of 2024. As global and national debt grow, adequate tax systems are essential to support public goods and ensure that governments can run effectively, as the minister would know. However, there are massive divergences between tax regimes, profit shifting across jurisdictions, and new economic and technological models that make existing methods of calculation irrelevant. How can current efforts to reform the tax code be put into action? And what innovations are there to ensure that it's fit for the future? This session will be 45 minutes, and we will take time for questions at the end, so if you have any questions, please prepare to ask them. Let's provide a little bit more context before we get into the conversation with our group of experts here. Against the backdrop of growing global inequities, rising public debt levels, and multinational profit shifting, taxation is undergoing a significant transformation. Global public debt reached an all-time high of $92 trillion in 2022, which is a five-fold surge from 2000, and the most in almost six decades. Rising inequalities are straining the systems with concerning spikes over the last five years. Multinational enterprises continue to leverage a disparate global tax landscape with the OECD estimating annual losses of countries between $100 and $240 billion USD. The confluence of factors has led to increased pressure on governments to increase tax revenues and reform tax codes. Countries continue to innovate at the national level and are increasingly adopting digital technologies in order to improve tax administration. At the same time, momentum for tax reform at the global level is gathering along different lines of thought. With the 2021 OECD G20 inclusive framework on base erosion and profit shifting and the recently adopted UN resolution on international tax cooperation at the UN, two visions to reshape the future of global taxation are on the table today. So with global consensus for change, what new solutions are needed to make fiscal fit for purpose and where are the global tax system heading? So today, to tackle this issue, we have four experts as I've already mentioned. I will start immediately to my left with Minister Situmbeko Mascutwane, who is the Minister of Finance and National Planning of Zambia. Thank you very much for being with us. We have Allison Schrager, who's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in the U.S. Thank you, Allison. Lucas Chancel, who's an associate professor at Sciences Poe in France and also a visiting professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard. And Amitabh Bahar, who's the executive director at Interim at Oxfam International in Kenya. Thank you all for joining us. Let me start with you. Can I start with you, Chancel? Can I ask you a question? How can we ensure that tax systems are equitable and capable of supporting public goods in the face of growing global and national debt? Well, thank you for the invitation. I think maybe the starting point of this conversation is realizing the growing public spending and public investment needs in the coming decades. So climate change is going to require a significant increase in investments from all actors, but the public sector will have to massively invest in solutions and also in compensation of potential losers. And this is going to further increase the needs for public resources. And so governments might want to choose to, you know, increase debt levels. That might be one solution. That might be partly what some governments might choose to do, but surely not everything will be financed through debt, especially given the context that you've just highlighted. And so taxes, from my perspective, will have to be increased in order to finance these new needs. And then the question is how do we increase these taxes in a way that is fair, in a way that is equitable, in a way that small and medium businesses do not feel that, again, they will pay higher tax rates than the large businesses. And in a way that the working in the middle classes in many countries do not feel that they also pay higher tax rates than very wealthy individuals, because this is effectively what has happened over the past 40 years. The big actors, large multinational companies and centimillionaires have been paying lower tax rates as a share of their revenues than the rest of the population. And you know, the theme of this event, of this Davos conference is rebuilding trust. And clearly this definitely undermines trust in proportions that are even hard to imagine. And what also undermines trust, I feel, is when we say, when the global committee says, okay, we've cracked this, we've solved this with this 15% multinational minimum corporate tax rate, signed in 2021, we've solved the problem. Actually, we're very far from having solved the problem of tax justice in this world. For one thing, the 15% minimum tax, in fact, is still much lower than what small and medium businesses pay in most countries in this world. Now, one solution would be to say, okay, let's reduce the 15% tax rate for small and medium businesses to 15% so that everybody pays the same. But then where do you get your resources to invest in public goods? So, we really need to fix these loopholes at the top of the tax system. It's always better when we do this collectively with 140 countries. But I really think that we should not, countries should not wait for 140 countries agreement to move forward. And we've seen that some countries have been front runners here. The US, for instance, when they ask for automatic exchange of bank information, that's a way to close some of the loopholes to ensure that people pay their taxes. Some countries have implemented wealth taxes on the very wealthy. Some European countries think that's a way forward. And I think that's where countries need to continue going. Otherwise, trust will not be there. And resources will not be there to invest in climate change and all these other challenges. Thank you very much. These are good opening remarks to frame this conversation. Minister, may I turn to you? You're sitting in a position where you have to make these decisions and they're real people who depend on the policies that you put in place. Can you share with us your view on this, and especially over the last few years in Southern Africa? Yes, thank you very much. Let me start by saying that true broad themes that shape our thinking as we push on with the matters regarding taxation. Firstly, it is indeed true that there are elements within our societies that do not pay their full share of tax because they just choose to willfully avoid the taxes. As you know, Zambia is a mining country, and one of the things that we have noticed is that there are a number of, especially the small mining companies, the small mining companies all over the place and their contribution to the tax net is we estimate that to be limited. So we are addressing this, riding on technology, applying the latest technology, borrowing from what others have done. This is going to be one of our key objectives starting in 2024 how to bring these people into the tax net because they must pay taxes. So that is something that we are running with. Second issue that we are running with, let's not forget that countries such as Zambia and I suspect many other African countries, including South Africa, our biggest problem right now is unemployment, youth unemployment. We are seeing engineers graduating, economists, lawyers and so forth. They have jobs and because they have no jobs, they cannot pay taxes. So our responsibility is to create jobs so that we have decent human beings that we can decently provide for in our countries. But of course as we provide jobs, they also pay taxes. So for us, apart from focusing on those who are dodging from taxes, we see tax is a very important instrument to create jobs. Now in the past, I think sometime there's been a tendency to think that we can grow ourselves out of poverty by imposing tax rates that are well beyond those that comparable countries would be imposing. And this is very common in the mining sector for example in the case of Zambia and many other countries. You impose very high rates thinking that you solve your problems of debt, you solve your problems of how to build infrastructure. What do you see? The end result is that the investment that must come in to exploit the natural resources and do other things, that investment declines. To give you a specific example in the case of Zambia, between 2010 and now, between 2010 and now, while no single mine was opened in Zambia, Copa Mine, in fact they were closing across the border in DRC, new mines were opening. So today DRC produces more than 2 million tons of Copa. Ten years ago, they were only doing 400,000, 400,000 tons. Today they are producing more than 2 million tons. Where is Zambia? It's still stuck at the level where it was. What has been the problem? The tax regime in Zambia was way out of line. Our detractors will say, you are giving incentives, we are not giving incentives. We are just realigning our taxes to what other mining countries are taxing, because ours was way too out. And we paid the penalty for that, instead of investment coming to Zambia, investment went across the border. So therefore, to be able to collect more taxes, the first instance is to realign these taxes to what others are doing, attract investment, produce more, and with more production, more taxes will be paid, more people will be employed to pay the taxes. So for us, that is now the theme of how can we also use tax as an instrument for raising investment. And I think the opportunity is great for us, because the minerals that we have, are the minerals that the world is looking for in terms of greening the world economy. The copper, the cobalt, the manganese, the nickel. So this is the time now to realign the taxes with what everybody else does, so that we take advantage of this special window that is open to produce more, create more jobs, and there is taxes infrastructure. Thank you very much for helping us to appreciate the real world implications. We'll come back to the policy of people. And Allison, can you help us think a little bit about how as the world tries to do this harmonizing of tax rates around the world, what are some of the challenges in the different jurisdictions? Well, I mean, certainly for the, say, there's different pillars going forward, at least that the OECD put out in the first one, is increasing taxes on large multinationals. So not only taxing them in the country where they're domain, but also where they're doing sales. And potentially, that could be a good way to raise revenue. But I think we're already seeing reluctance, certainly in the U.S., to pass that. So you do have to contend with, let you know, individual governments and sort of getting aligned on this. And I think that's also becoming a bigger challenge. I mean, it's a very complex plan, and it certainly is causing a lot of uncertainty. And I think that's something we want to be mindful of, because when we're talking about equity, there's two things we want to think about. We want to think about equity within countries, but we also need to think about equity globally. And I was reading your report as I do every year, and I was just so struck by, you know, the inequality between different countries. And so much of getting around that is going to be encouraging investment all around the world, particularly in developing and lowering income countries. So when you're harmonizing, you know, as well, you know, you don't want to create tax havens, but you also want to maintain a level of certainty and transparency so you can encourage more foreign direct investment, because that is probably the best way to sort of share global wealth. Great. Well, Amitabh, Allison has referenced your report. Do you want to share with us a little bit about their conclusions? Sure. So thank you for having me here. But let me start by a couple of framing points. Musk, as we know, is one of the richest man in history. He pays a true tax rate of 3.3%. We as Oxfam work in Uganda with a trader, her name is Christine, and she pays 40%. Something is completely broken in the tax structure that we have. And this is happening in the context, and thank you Allison for the referencing our report. Since 2020, the billionaires have doubled their wealth. The top five have doubled their wealth, and this is the time when 5 billion people have collectively become poorer. Since 2020, billionaires have added $3 trillion to their wealth. And this is happening at a time when 800 million people sleep hungry. In India, the country where I come from, in December, and everybody's celebrating the economic success story of India, but in December, India said that they needed to give food doles to 800 million people. So that's the context we are living in. And there are solutions. One of them is to clearly tax the rich, the super rich, both in terms of income and wealth. And I think it's also extremely critical. Our report this year is particularly shining a light. On how we're entering a era of billionaire supremacy, where you have enormous power in corporations, which are essentially run by a few billionaires. So if you look at just the tax rates, since the 80s in OECD countries, we have half the tax rates now. And you're looking at countries starving one after another for resources to invest in fundamental services, like education, health, drinking water. Sometimes I feel maybe we are far removed sitting at wealth. The countries that I go, I actually see hunger. You do not get safe drinking water. And we are talking about more and more profits for these big corporations. So there's something fundamentally wrong and then that needs to be fixed. So I would say really, as in if it's about rebuilding trust, it's about rebuilding trust with the social contract we have. And these large corporations are eroding trust. And that's a massive threat also to democracy. So I would really, it should be an urgent wake-up call for all of us. If you don't invert this conversation, I worry that we are certainly heading towards extremely turbulent times. So let me just ask you a follow-up question. In the opening remarks and others have mentioned some of the global tax reform efforts that are underway, do you think that they go far enough in addressing the issues of inequality that you're talking about? So we do have the possibility of inequality-busting tax policies. We are happy that President Lula via G20 is now bringing tax as a fundamental work stream. We're happy to see countries like whether it's Colombia, Spain, to start talking about wealth taxation. So there are some efforts happening. But if you ask me, are we going far enough? No. As in there's much more that needs to be done. And that's where I think this growing inequality needs to be brought in. It's not a small fraction of the gap that we are looking at. We're going to completely miss the 1.5 target. And if you look at the enormity of what climate change is doing, as you look at East Africa, five years of drought and sudden floods, which means massive disruption in the agriculture season. More than four million people have been displaced. Where do you get these resources? Good, we talk of loss and damage fund. But the commitments are so small. Where will we get all these resources from? If you don't tax the super rich, the super wealthy, and from our report, let me just quote one more figure because I think that's startling. We are living in an era of cost of living crisis. And it's the same time when the top 100 corporations have paid 80% of their profits to their shareholders. What about this whole conversation in VEF about stakeholder capitalism? What happens to the supply chain? What happens to the place, the agriculture worker from where you procure your raw material? So there are several questions that need to be asked. There is a fundamental need for re-looking at the question of inequality. Minister, let me come back to you for a moment. In your opening remarks, you spoke a lot about your domestic policies and some of the stakeholders internally to Zambia that may not be bearing their fair portion. When we talk about the global efforts, how do any of these global efforts at harmonizing impact a country like Zambia? Will this be a benefit to Zambia? Well, I think from the global efforts as far as we can tell, the key benefit that we can derive out of that is sharing of knowledge and skills. I spoke earlier on what is being done to draw in those mining companies, small mining companies that are not contributing to the tax net in a fair manner. And we think that we are benefiting a lot from what is being done in the world. The technology that is being developed, and I must say that the technology that we are deploying now is technology that we have borrowed from one of the neighboring countries that are far ahead of us in terms of technology. So to the extent that new tools and techniques are being developed, it is something that is of benefit to us. I would also want to say that there is efforts that is going on now to share information across the world on taxpayers, whereby tax authorities are able to exchange information about, I think you called it shifting of profits and stuff like that. We encourage those kind of efforts to continue because we are good consumers, we can benefit a lot from these developments that are taking place. I also want to say finally that we are always talking to each other and even at policy level to be able to learn from colleagues what is it that works and what is it that doesn't work and one of the conclusions that we have drawn is the thinking that a country will become rich, a citizen becomes rich by imposing super heavy taxes out of line with what others are doing.  Finance is a myth of the way that attracts investments, creates wealth, more jobs, more taxation. So I would say that these are some of the elements through which we are learning from our interactions with the rest of the world.  Can you comment from your perspective on what some of the challenges are to harmonizing the tax regimes across different jurisdictions? Maybe starting by saying that over the past 40 years there has often been this implicit assumption that tax evasion, whether legal or not, was something that countries couldn't really do something about. Tax evasion was, you know, it was there. It had to be taken for granted. But the truth is that this is not a law of nature. Tax evasion is not something that is imposed on us like gravity. It's something that governments can actually act against. So it's always better when we get together as a global community and we discuss about what should be the actual tax rate and the set of rules that are going to go with it. And that's the ideal way to do it. But even as a set of countries or even a single country who would like to move forward on these issues, there are options. So there are things like exit taxes, for instance, when very wealthy individuals decide that, okay, I do not want to pay taxes in this country anymore so I don't want to be a resident of this country anymore. I'm going out. Well, some countries have exit taxes to try to compensate for the fact that these persons created a lot of wealth probably because they were very clever individuals, probably also because the government was providing them with a set of infrastructures of public services, of education systems, of cultural systems, whatever, that made them be able to enrich themselves. So exit taxes is really something that countries can do and of course it's always better than countries harmonize all that. But that's my first point. Tax evasion, whether legal or not, is not a law of nature and there are many things that governments can do in order to act against it. Maybe the second point here is that when we look at how the negotiations on the 15% global minimum corporate income tax rate were carried out, I feel that at least I observed that a lot of low-income and middle-income countries were upset about how the negotiation process happened and it is true that this was a negotiation process that was under the ages of the OECD giving a lot of power in these negotiations to rich countries, to rich nations. And so when we're discussing about maybe augmenting this process or reopening it to go further, I feel it's very important to think about the right setup and to me the ideal setup here is the United Nations. It's not a club of rich countries that are benevolent enough to incorporate other countries. No, it should be, you know, every country has an equal voice here and I welcome the proposal by, you know, the global south led by Brazil in the G20 but we really need to hear to incorporate all countries in a framework like under the UN tax convention that has been pushing these subjects over the past years and that have actually come up with proposals that are more favorable to low and middle-income countries than what was actually adopted at the OECD. Maybe a final point of this. So to me there are things that have worked over the past few years in terms of tax negotiations, things that have started but are still very limited in what they were able to actually achieve and topics that actually are entirely missing from the agenda. Things that work is automatic exchange of banking information. That is something that is very positive and it worked. What has started to be discussed is global minimum corporate taxation but 15% as I said is too low and there are so many loopholes that corporations continue to pay very low tax rates, 5%, 10% lower than 15%. And something that hasn't been addressed at all is the taxation of centimillionaires or billionaires and so far we do not have a framework to discuss that and to make progress on this and this is where I would like to see a lot of progress in the coming month and years. That's great. In just a moment I'm going to open it up to questions so if you have any start getting them ready. But let me ask a question now to Allison and to Amitabh. We've just talked about some of the more innovative ideas to address this. Can you share with us any ideas that you've come across in your research that you think are innovative that can address the challenges that we're talking about? Well, I mean I think what we want to do, I mean we do really need to rethink a lot of global tax. I mean really just because we have a more an economy more based on intangibles we have a lot more globalization. So really I mean it depends on the country. I focus more on the U.S. and I mean my preferred way of taxing the U.S. isn't exactly innovative. I think we should move more towards consumption taxes and away from corporate taxes. You know obviously we need corporate taxes but the problem with corporate taxes and using those as your main means of raising tax revenue is often the person who ends up paying for them that burden is borne by the workers. And if you want to be equitable, I mean that is often not the people we want to target which is why the way I was always taught public finance is it's better to sort of tax consumption, particularly high-end consumption. That way you can be more targeted and get the wealthy because as much as we would like to get more revenue from the super wealthy and they certainly can afford to pay a lot more it's very challenging to tax their wealth because wealth is very hard to measure. A lot of their assets are in private entities that are really impossible to value. So I think we should be thinking a lot more about say VAT taxes and a lot of aspects of technology is making that a lot easier because you can sort of see at all different chains of the sort of production process where value is being created. We're kind of instituting those VATs a lot easier because we might want higher than a 15% tax on corporations but politically it's a very hard thing when you have a lot of countries that have sort of built their economies around being a low tax state so getting them to agree to it. As I said, the U.S. is already sort of very reluctant to pass this first pillar just because it would largely hit their big tech firms and sort of they see that as debatable but some politicians definitely see that as undermining their tax revenue in their base so that's what makes sort of even something as simple as that which isn't even the 15% minimum tax just a relatively easier part already very hard to pass so we have to be realistic about what's possible think very carefully about tax incidents and who that fits and what's politically feasible. Amitabh, do you agree on consumption tax? I was just coming back to your question I would say that why do we run after innovation when the fundamentals are broken? I think it's really critical we know progressive taxation works and that's something that we are running away from. In the last one decade corporate taxes have come down 10% income taxes have gone up by 20% consumption taxes have gone up by 10% what are we trying to do? We're ending up actually taxing the workers and common citizens whereas on the other hand the super rich continue to go scot-free so it's just going back to the fundamentals of progressive taxation and that's something that we certainly need to do and on the question of the corporate taxes as in the enormity of the power they have as in again I would urge everybody to have a look at our report we're essentially making that point that these corporate monopolies now have so much power that they're able to even change policies and the economic systems and that's extremely worrying for any democratic society. Yes I see you have something you want to say Lucas go ahead. Very quick response to the argument that it's actually too complicated to tax wealth though we should tax consumption. I didn't say complicated. Difficult, complicated, hard to measure. Well there are a lot of businesses in this world that actually they're daily businesses about estimating the value of other businesses so if we're not able to measure the wealth of businesses and of individuals in this data intensive world there is some kind of an issue and the other argument here is you know in 1913 and 14 when income progressive taxation was invented the very argument of those who were against that was to say we do not have the data we don't know how much people earn and that was correct at the time governments didn't have this statistical toolkit to know how much people were earning they created this statistical apparatus to implement these taxes so to me this is really the kind of leap that we need and that we can do today because if we start to tax consumption as was just said before this is really the very things that from my perspective contributes to undermine trust because taxes on consumption we know are very often in fact in so many cases very regressive that is they fall much more on those who have the least resources and the very wealthy are able to you know have a very small tax burden when we have a tax system that relies essentially on consumption taxes Minister do you want to get in on this conversation about consumption taxes? Well I do understand this debate especially from countries where there were a lot of people who are wealthy and of course many other people who are consumers but when you have got few of those because if you look at the case of Zambia the number of corporate bodies that are really viable and contributing positively there are very few so the end result is that people who are in formal employment and therefore are unable to pay taxes and also people who are in the formal business themselves and who get captured in tax net there are very few so our challenge is to increase the number of corporates or companies whether they are big whether they are small our challenge is to increase the number of investment more companies, more individuals in employment if we are just going to insist on say the few that are there the few business that are there tax them and think that we are now going to create more money for the state you are shooting yourself in the foot if you are going to say the few of you who are in employment, formal sector employment we tax you more and more and we think that we are going to add value to the economy you'll be shooting yourself in the foot so I think for us our challenge is how can we raise the level of economic participation by entities that are economically viable and we can only do so by avoiding the risks of over taxation I'm not saying no tax everyone must pay their taxes but the temptation in the third world is to believe that if you tax higher than what other people are taxing then you are making progress you are not making progress you are delaying progress Do we have questions here? Yes? I think someone's going to bring you a microphone Thank you I'm Sanma Melisa Moghamedi I'm from Global Shapers Morelia which is in Mexico I have a lot of questions but I will ask just one I'm starting my master in international taxes so for me it's very important to share these and ask for me it's not about well taxes I think that's a solution to a problem that has been going on to a couple of years ago but it's not a future thing that should happen because for me it's more about the income taxes hasn't been able to achieve the present that they need to contribute for companies because there is a lot of loop holds in the taxes or our law institutions and we also are not talking about the informal economies that we have in all of our countries of course everyone should pay taxes but not everyone is paying them and also the ones that are paying it it's just that it's up for them the rate but not for the ones that are not paying taxes so for me the question will be how can we make or some strategies for the informal economies to actually pay taxes instead of just looking for the ones that are paying and up the rates for them that will be my question Informal economy, who wants to tackle that one? I could say a few things I don't know that much about it but it does seem that there's just the more sort of digitization of money is really opening up a lot of new doors for that and as I said is more people like are paid electronically then that's information because I mean right now if you're being paid cash there's really no way to know in the informal economy who's getting paid what so I think that I mean it's slow I mean this is also sort of often a population that is still using cash more but certainly it's also a population that's using a lot of transactions also on phones more so I think I mean there's been some case studies in the African continent about different ways you can start collecting tax revenue from that population you know obviously at an appropriate rate Maybe I can just add on that from what we've seen in our country in Zambia you're right there's a lot of tax avoidance from actors in the informal sector so one of the things that we've had for some time is to create a threshold that if you are small and medium especially the very small one micro because those are the ones that tend to avoid taxes a lot at that level we have attempted to put a threshold and say if your revenue per year is so much we will not go after you with formal books and accountants and so forth we just agree that X percent of your revenues you must pay in taxes but I think she also mentioned I think the era of digitization is creating new opportunities of how we can make people to contribute and one of the things that we did in their budget pronouncement for this year 2024 is that money transfers via mobile funds because that is now a lot of transactions are taking place in Africa not via banks but via mobile phone transfers and to the extent that a number of the informal sector business players transact a lot on the mobile phones we will impose a small tax on the transfers themselves of course we are also mindful of the fact that we should not cue this initiative it's good that people who are in the informal sector have now been included in the financial sector via mobile phones so we don't want to come with a big hammer to kill that prematurely but at the same time we believe that these transactions reflect a certain degree of ability to pay and therefore we will impose taxes there's much more to be learned and as this digitization comes on stream and progresses I'm sure I will learn more lessons on what else we can do to make them contribute Amitabh, do you have something that you want to say on this topic? Yeah, so I know we are running out of time so I'll just make three telegraphic points the first I think we need to also get into the fundamental question of why do we have the informal sector and what does the informal sector essentially means at least in India it essentially means no job security no social security and therefore again the argument of we need much greater progressive taxation to ensure that the state is able to deliver the fundamental task of ensuring dignity of work for everyone so I think that would really be the fundamental point second hasn't just because I get completely foxed by this argument that because there's poor tax compliance let's do away with taxes a leaking bucket let's not collect water we need to ensure compliance and that's really the critical piece and the third digital with technology businesses are changing dramatically capital is able to move across borders so comfortably and people at the moment just cannot so many of people will not even get visas to come to this place so there are those fundamental questions that we need to address particularly on the informal sectors and I feel very strongly if you work with the informal sector in India they're just surviving whereas there's still a very large class of people who are thriving with excessive opulence well I think that this has been a really dynamic conversation with many different perspectives shared let me try to summarize what I've heard in this conversation we know that the theme of this overall with is around rebuilding trust and it was pointed out in the early part of this conversation that that certainly applies to tax policy and that's a big part of what we're talking about here today is trust, trust within nations, trust globally climate change is requiring an increased need for public resources and so this is one of the very important things that's driving the need to think about tax policy we went on to talk about the fact that small businesses seem to pay more in taxes than corporates and we had many examples of that and the minister helped us also to appreciate that within his country that is certainly a challenge for the small businesses we then went on to talk about how different countries need to be aligned globally and within a region and if you don't do so then from the perspective of any one nation you might lose out to economic development that goes across borders we went on to talk also about the fact that the global south needs to have its voice in the tax policy and that many of the international policies that we've discussed that have been on the table have been driven by the global north and so then we had an interesting conversation about consumption tax versus income tax we have different opinions which always makes for a lively conversation and I think that at the end of the day we had some closing remarks that looked a lot at the fact that why are we looking for innovation because there is a view that progressive taxing works and it's just a question of enforcing that we also heard from the minister that in his country he's looking to use technology in order to do a better job in complying with the existing tax structures and that compliance will help achieve some of these goals so thank you all very much for your contributions to this conversation and thank you for being a good audience