In 2009, a US-backed coup overthrew the progressive government of Honduras. Then a procession of pro-US, pro-oligarchy presidents did what pro-US, pro-oligarchy presidents do: create tax loopholes and corporate giveaways.

The results were predictably terrible. In the period 2010 to 2023, these tax loopholes and exemptions cost the Honduran treasury more than the country’s entire national public debt. According to official statistics, Honduran national public debt stood at $16.6 billion at the close of 2023. It is estimated that the value lost to the treasury from tax exemptions and loopholes granted between 2010 and 2023 is over $20 billion.

Honduras’ tax code, coupled with banking secrecy and opaque systems of masking beneficial ownership, wasn’t just limiting the Honduran tax take, but those of other countries, as Honduras was on the path to being labelled a tax haven by the OECD.

But justice caught up with the leaders of the Honduran oligarchy, both literally and figuratively. Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras, now lives in disgrace in a US federal prison, serving a 45 year sentence for enabling drug traffickers to use his military and national police force to help ship tons of cocaine into the United States.

In 2022, a new progressive president, Xiomara Castro took office. Part of her agenda was to tackle the tax system.

Now she’s doing it, with a Tax Justice Law, set to be debated in Congress next week.

The Law clamps down on the injustice in the tax system through a series of measures including:

• Instituting the progressive principle that those with more should pay more;
• Closing tax loopholes that permitted large-scale corporate tax avoidance;
• Assessing global, not just national, profits to end corporate profit shifting;
• Taxing corporate and individual income received from abroad;
• Ending banking secrecy for tax matters;
• Making beneficial owners of corporations liable for taxation;
• Ratifying the OECD’s Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters.

The plan was endorsed by 85 leading global economists, in a letter coordinated by the Progressive International published this week. The economists argue that the Honduran government’s proposed reforms would be “critical for reducing inequality in Honduras, supporting social and economic development and closing pervasive tax loopholes that undermine tax revenues.”

The signatories brought together by the Progressive International include significant figures in the economics profession such as award-winning Indian development economist Jayati Ghosh, US American Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics and former chief economist to the World Bank, José Antonio Ocampo, former Colombian finance minister and former United Nations Under Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs, French economist and Director of the EU Tax Observatory Gabriel Zucman, US American Jeffrey Sachs, who was called “probably the most important economist in the world” by the New York Times, Chilean Gabriel Palma, father of the Palma Ratio of inequality, Greek economist and former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, award-winning British economist Ann Pettifor, known for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, and renowned US American economist James K Galbraith.

The economists argue these reforms are a “robust package” that is “likely to raise revenue for the Honduran state without increasing tax rates or creating new taxes.”

Honduras’ proposed Tax Justice Law has significance beyond the country’s borders. The economists argue that the law “strikes a blow against the global tax haven regime and banking secrecy industry, setting an example to other countries whose tax jurisdictions are currently used to undermine the tax takes of other states through facilitating tax dodging.”

The Law, they write, sets “an example of how states can assert sovereignty through taking action against tax injustice individually and collectively.”

Latest from the Movement

No Harbour for Genocide campaign stops the Overseas Santorini from docking

The oil tanker the Overseas Santorini — travelling from the US, destined to aid and abet Israel’s genocide in Gaza — has been stopped from accessing ports in both Spain and Gibraltar following pressure from the No Harbour for Genocide campaign.

The ship was originally scheduled to dock in the Spanish port of Algeciras, en route from Texas to Israel, on Tuesday 30 July. But the campaign’s pressure led to the port-worker unions UGT and CCOO backing it, and Spanish politicians – including the current and former Podemos leaders Ione Belarra and Pablo Iglesias, as well as Sumar, the junior coalition party in government – denouncing the planned docking.

Blocked from Spain, the Overseas Santorini changed its destination for Gibraltar. Activists on the ground lobbied the port authorities and trade union to prevent the ship from accessing Gibraltar’s facilities. And a cross-party group of British MPs, coordinated by the Progressive International, wrote to Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, Governor Ben Bathurst and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy calling on them to “prevent and prohibit” the tanker from accessing Gibraltar’s port. Under this combined pressure, the Overseas Santorini didn’t make it to port.

Now the ship is heading east, it faces new opponents joining the No Harbour for Genocide campaign. Cypriot party AKEL has called on the Cypriot government to prevent the Overseas Santorini, an oil tanker carrying jet fuel for Israel, from docking in Cypriot ports.

And when it makes its return West to Texas, it faces the prospect of being stopped and inspected by Spanish authorities after Ione Belarra, the leader of Podemos, filed a complaint with the National Court.

Make Amazon Pay for extreme heat

Amazon workers from around the world have issued a common set of demands to keep them safe from extreme heat. In facilities where workers have taken collective action, they forced Amazon to install extra fans and cooling stations, ensure lower temperatures and provide heat breaks. From California, US, to India, warehouse workers and drivers have stood together and won action from Amazon to keep them safe from extreme heat.

Now, they are highlighting how Amazon’s brutal productivity targets, anti-unionism and unsafe conditions put them at unacceptable risks. With Amazon workers dying on the job during heat waves, heat protection and climate action are matters of life and death. Amazon workers are sadly not alone, new research from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) finds that over 70% of the global workforce faces excessive heat, resulting in 22.85 million injuries and nearly 19,000 deaths annually.

The workers are demanding: transparent and achievable production quotas; adequate breaks and rest periods; heat safety measures like breaks and water; proper safety monitoring; better working conditions; worker voice on safety; no retaliation for raising safety concerns or refusing unsafe work; and for Amazon to drop its opposition to unionisation and collective bargaining.

Juan Guaidó 2.0

Following Venezuela’s disputed presidential election, which the National Electoral Council declared won by President Nicholás Maduro with 51.2% of the vote, the US-backed 25-year-long regime change operation continues apace. A leaked draft of a US House of Representatives resolution drafted by Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) & Mario Díaz-Balart (R) calls on the US to recognise opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González "as the president-elect of Venezuela" and to call for the "imposition of new sanctions" on the Venezuelan government and its foreign allies.

Art: Motyko is a Honduran Cuban-American artist from Tequesta-Seminole land, Miami working in collage, film and poetry to “fight for a world where our people are free, where community care exists above profit, and where we’ve shattered colonial restrictions on what’s possible.” Motyko’s multimedia works have covered issues including gentrification, immigration, workers’ rights, and the Palestinian liberation and BDS movements. Farm to Table responded to last summer’s heatwave in solidarity with farmworkers demanding rest, shade and water breaks.