This is the second in a series of advocacy tools produced by RightingFinance to assist education and dissemination of standards on tax policy and human rights contained in a report produced by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights...

In Liberia, extensive tax concessions to foreign investors involved in ore projects go far beyond the arrangements set out in the Liberia Revenue Code (LRC),to the point that the IMF recommended that if such concessions came up for renegotiation, the authorities should aim to harmonize the terms with the Revenue Code and avoid tax breaks...

[S]tates commonly justify granting incentives on the need to attract foreign investment. So, based on jurisprudence from the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in a case like that the state will have the burden of showing which human rights the investment meant to be attracted by the incentives will advance. It will also have to show that the incentive was the option least restrictive to economic, social and cultural rights.

Given evidence that the success of fiscal incentives to attract foreign investment is limited, the link between offered incentives and incoming investment cannot be lightly presumed. So the state will need to show that the investment would not have come absent the incentive and that the benefits from the investment outweigh its cost...