This chapter considers the different elements of developing your tax advocacy strategy and how to bring them together in a winning mix.

This chapter provides:

  • an introduction to the advocacy cycle
  • six steps for developing your advocacy strategy:
    • Step 1: Identifying the problem and its root causes and finding a solution
    • Step 2: Assessing your external context, including identifying your key tax stakeholders and who has the power to help you achieve the change you seek
    • Step 3: Setting your tax goals, objectives and indicators
    • Step 4: Developing your key messages on tax and tailoring them to your target audience
    • Step 5: Deciding on your advocacy approach – will you adopt an inside or outside strategy to your tax justice issue?
    • Step 6:Planning your monitoring and evaluation
  • tax-related examples to illustrate the above steps
  • tools and top tips
  • the following appendices:
    • Appendix 1: Advocacy strategy template
    • Appendix 2: Stakeholder mapping table

The interaction pages provide suggestions for group exercises to:

  • consider the different stages in developing an advocacy strategy
  • enable you to use problem and solution trees to identify the root causes of the issue you want to address and develop objectives to tackle it
  • analyse relevant tax stakeholders in your context and assess who has the power to help you achieve the change you seek
  • consider how to make your objectives specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound.