NEW YORK • The world took a big step towards sweeping changes to global taxation as 130 countries and jurisdictions endorsed setting a minimum rate for corporations, along with rules to share the spoils from multinational firms such as Facebook and Google.
After years of missteps and setbacks, the deal brokered in negotiations at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) sets the stage for Group of 20 finance ministers to sign off on an agreement in principle at a meeting in Venice next week.
That could mean implementation as soon as 2023 of rules that would curtail tax evasion by making multinational companies pay an effective rate of "at least 15 per cent" and give smaller countries more tax revenue from foreign firms.
A small group of nations "have not yet joined" the plan, the Paris-based OECD said in a statement yesterday.
Several key countries that had been question-marked agreed to the statement, including India, China and Turkey, according to the OECD. The technical details may leave room for further concessions to developing economies.
The broad agreement yesterday averts another stumble that could have proved fatal for efforts to rework tax rules, given there was only a short window of opportunity to get a global deal approved by the United States Congress and other national Parliaments.
Resolving the issue had become increasingly urgent for the world economy after disagreements over taxing tech firms and setting a minimum rate spiralled into trade tensions last year.
The promise of nearly US$150 billion (S$202 billion) in extra revenue for governments also helped get a deal over the line as most countries face massive budget shortfalls in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The difficulty that the deal's advocates have faced is getting developing nations to sign up wholesale to something initially brokered by the Group of Seven.
The small club of rich economies, including the United States, Britain and France, agreed in London last month on a broad outline for the two pillars of the OECD negotiations: a mechanism to share rights to tax "at least 20 per cent" of the profits above a 10 per cent margin of the largest multinationals; and a minimum corporate tax of at least 15 per cent.
As it is, the OECD document released yesterday made some changes to those proposals, saying that the amount of profit to be reallocated should be between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of residual profit above a 10 per cent margin.
It also specifies that companies with revenue above €20 billion (S$32 billion) will be subject to the new rules on where they are taxed.
In a concession to smaller economies, the Inclusive Framework agreed to review the terms after seven years and reduce the threshold to €10 billion.
The smallest economies will also benefit from a lower threshold to enable them to tax multinationals, according to the OECD terms.
BLOOMBERG
