Tackling Tax and Saving Lives: Children, tax and financing for development

This report highlights new Save the Children research that underlines the importance of tax in preventing child deaths.

The findings show that if all developing countries were to mobilise 20% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in tax revenue, while keeping social spending allocations constant, 287,000 child deaths could be averted each year, and an additional 72 million people could have access to clean water.

Illicit financial flows (IFFs) are the main obstacles to success – money originating in crime and corruption that is taken out of the country through tax evasion, money laundering, bribery, and other criminal acts.

This report concludes with a set of recommendations for the international community as well as for developing countries on how to address IFFs and mobilise tax revenues to ‘get to zero’ on child mortality.