A three-day conference on “Taxation and the Sustainable Development Goals” was held at the UN headquarters in New York. The conference gathered ministers and deputy ministers of finance, tax authorities, and senior representatives from civil society, private sector, academia, regional and global organisations to debate the key directions required for tax policy and administration to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Sustainable Development Goals is a plan of action agreed by members of the UN which aims to eradicate poverty.

The conference covered five areas:

• domestic resource mobilization and the state
• the role of tax in supporting sustainable economic growth, investment and trade
• the social dimensions of tax (poverty, inequality, and human development)
• tax capacity development
• tax cooperation

The conference aims to provide guidance to individual countries and other stakeholders on how to better target tax efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.