Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) launched in 2015 as a joint initiative by the OECD and the UN Development Program (UNDP). The idea of an international capacity building task force came from the Tax Justice Network ten years earlier, as a suggested solution to a worrying trend: Tax authorities in developing countries could only send one or a few employees to audit meetings with large multinationals, but were met by scores of company lawyers and accountants. As with all things civil society, the wait from inception to implementation was a long one. But since 2015, TIWB have launched 100 programmes across 54 jurisdictions in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, contributing to an estimated tax revenue increase of 1.7 billion USD, while a further 3.9 billion USD in taxes have been assessed.

While initially focusing on capacity building in auditing, TIWB has since taken on multiple new areas of assistance, as laid out in their annual report for 2021/2022. Programmes now cover criminal tax investigations, utilizing data received under the OECD initiative for automatic exchange of financial account information – the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), and digitalization of tax administrations. Most recently, in the wake of the OECDs new agreement on a Two-Pillar Solution for the digitalisation of the economy in October of 2021, TIWB are looking into supporting developing countries secure revenue increases from the implementation of the agreement. You can read more about these initiatives in TIWBs annual report.