18/02/22

INTERNATIONAL TAX: France urges implementation of global tax deal by early 2023.

As published on uk.investing.com, Friday 18 February, 2022.

PARIS (Reuters) - A global corporate tax deal reached last year needs to be implemented by early 2023, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told his G20 counterparts on Friday.

Last October nearly 140 countries reached a deal on a minimum tax rate of 15% on multinationals and agreed to make it harder for companies like Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) to avoid taxation by booking profits in low-tax jurisdictions.

The technical details are now being hammered out at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development so that countries can bring the new rules onto their law books by next year.

However, that deadline is widely considered to be highly ambitious, not least because U.S. President Joe Biden's administration is struggling to pass legislation that would bring U.S. law in line with the global deal.

"The key question is the implementation of our political agreement. There is no turning back, we need to move on," Le Maire said during a G20 finance ministers meeting.

"I'm really asking for a swift implementation of the OECD agreement on both Pillar I and Pillar II no later than the beginning 2023," he added.

Le Maire said he invited his G20 counterparts to come in June to Paris to sign a new multilateral legal framework needed to implement the agreement's first pillar, which makes it harder for digital giants to park profits in low-tax countries.