The Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), working with the G20
nations, agreed Tuesday on draft measures to deal with
multinational firms seeking to circumvent taxes by moving some
operations to low-tax nations.
The proposed measures are designed to ensure big
multinationals shoulder a greater share of the tax burden.
The 44 countries belonging to the two organizations hope to
cooperate on the problem where major global corporations arrange
their affairs to avoid paying taxes in jurisdictions where they
earn millions in revenues.
Current international tax rules and treaties among nations
have not kept pace with developments in the digital economy and
innovations that have allowed tax avoidance, the experts say.
The new rules would also require multinationals to make
public more information about how much taxes they pay to what
countries so governments can more easily understand where taxes
are being avoided.
Work on combatting tax avoidance began two years ago and in
mid-2013, as part of the OECD project, the Italian government
calculated that profitable multinationals including Amazon and
Facebook had together paid just one million euros in taxes in
2012.
Google has also been frequently named as an organization
that avoids paying taxes through an intricate series of holding
companies.
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