The Annual Technical Resolutions of CIAT, approved by consensus of the member countries present at the respective General Assembly, based on the main topic of central interest there discussed. They are not mandatory but have represented for years, guidelines, recommendations, considerations, trends, requirements and even strategies to follow for the Tax Administrations of the CIAT community, and, why not say it, also a reference for the international tax community, which has free access – through the institutional Web www.ciat.org and the Virtual Library – to all the technical documentation and publications that CIAT generates.

CIAT’s history and traditions tell us that at the 30th General Assembly in Santo Domingo in 1996, the Executive Council instructed the Executive Secretariat to prepare a declaration, with the participation of all member countries, which would be the result, and at the same time the purpose, of what was discussed on that occasion , on the theme “Impact of the Modernization Process on the Tax Administration”. This resulted in the drafting of a Charter – Document that was titled: Minimum necessary attributes for a  sound and effective Tax Administration.

That first CIAT declaration already presented issues such as “to guarantee the integrity, impartiality and continuity of its (the Tax Administration’s) actions, evidencing the strictest observance of ethics in its activities, thus promoting the taxpayers’ respect towards them” 

Since that year, the  CIAT General Assembly has annually adopted a declaration, prepared in advance in the meetings of the CIAT’s Topics Committee, which selects and outlines early the central theme and main sub-topics to be addressed at future meetings and the work of the Secretariat to assemble the concepts, proposals and contributions of member countries for the elaboration of these declarations.

The happy initiative of the current CIAT Executive Secretary, Marcio F. Verdi, to compile all the annual statements in a single publication coincided, significatively, with the recent 54th General Assembly, also organized by the Dominican Republic and held electronically on last June 23.

We are pleased to share this publication, Technical Resolutions of the General Assemblies of CIAT, 1996 -2020,  as a historical and reference publication, both for its core content of the topics included, and for the value of having been agreed upon, at each opportunity, by all the CIAT member countries.

I do not want to seem unfair by referring only to some issues included here, but in 2011 in Quito, Ecuador, the issue of ethics and morality in the TA was addressed; in 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the issue of international taxation, including the need for information exchange for tax purposes and the problem of transfer pricing, the year in which the OECD presented its BEPS Action Plan in response to the G20’s mandate, in Seoul, Korea, 2010.

And, finally, returning to the Dominican Republic in a virtual form in this opportunity, we have adopted the declaration on “Technological Innovation in Tax Administration”, included in this publication and whose subject, fully in line with today’s reality, leaves us with the following consideration, “Given the crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic, technological innovation in the Tax Administration is more necessary than ever, in order to maintain its activity and functions, support the taxpayers and contribute to adopting efficient and equitable collective measures to overcome and mitigate its effects”.

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