OECD-G20 aim to halt tax avoidance

(ANSA) - Paris, September 16 - 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.