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G7 Corporate Tax Deal -- Setting the Bar Too Low? -Shinzani Jain

-Newsclick.in

Finance ministers from G7 countries have agreed on a deal to check tax avoidance by the biggest multinational conglomerations. How the G20 reacts to this accord and how these plans are implemented, remains to be seen.

A recent report by ProPublica has revealed how multibillionaires from the US, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, among others, have managed to avoid paying federal taxes over the last few years. The report revealed that Bezos, the world’s richest man, paid no federal income taxes in 2007 and 2011; Musk achieved this feat in 2018. Others, including Michael Bloomberg, billionaire investors Carl Icahn and George Soros have also paid zero federal income taxes a number of times over the last few years.

Interestingly, this report comes a few days after the world’s wealthiest nations reached an agreement to tackle tax avoidance by multinational conglomerations and fix a global minimum corporate tax rate.

On June 5, finance ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations agreed on a deal that is touted to be a ‘historic step’ towards reshaping the global tax landscape. The deal proposes to do two things globally: create a more uniform corporate tax structure and minimise profit shifting by multinationals. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claimed that the deal aimed to end a ‘30-year race to the bottom on corporate tax rates’, as countries compete to lure multinationals. Further negotiations on the deal will be carried out in the G20 summit scheduled to be held in Venice next month.

The G7 came to an agreement that countries will tax corporate profits at a minimum rate of 15%. The agreement also aims at tackling the problem of tax avoidance by large multinational corporations by shifting their profits to tax havens. A tax haven is a low-tax or no-tax jurisdiction whose laws or rules can be used to evade or avoid tax laws or regulations of other jurisdictions.

In order to avoid payment of taxes, multinational companies use a tool known as Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), whereby differences in tax rules across jurisdictions lead to double non-taxation or less than a single taxation. It also includes arrangements that achieve no or low taxation by shifting profits away from jurisdictions where activity takes place. This is done by migrating income from intangible sources such as drug patents, software and royalties on intellectual property to low-tax or no-tax jurisdictions, thereby allowing companies to avoid paying higher taxes in their traditional home countries.

In an interview with senior journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Monica Bhatia, Head, Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information in Tax Matters (OECD), explained: “In recent times, the governments of many developed and developing countries have been seeking to discourage the use of tax havens. One of the most talked-about such moves is Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD is a grouping of some of the richest countries in the world. The countries that had at one time actively encouraged, or even turned a blind eye towards the use of tax havens to avoid and evade payment of taxes, have today veered round to the view that such jurisdictions not only deprive governments of revenues, but also connive in a host of illicit activities.”

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