Make multinationals pay tax UK, France, Germany and others urge G20

Britain, France and Germany are spearheading a campaign at the G20 summit in Russia for an international clampdown on corporate tax avoidance.

A report by the OECD found that multinational companies were managing to avoid paying tax altogether by taking advantage of different countries’ rules.

The UK says despite huge changes in the global economy, global tax rules are the same as a hundred years ago. France argues that international cooperation is essential.

“The economic context is now of a globalised world where there are more investment and capital flows and where new forms of business are developing especially in the area of digital economy,” said the French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici. “We must ensure that this new form of business also pays its fair share and therefore we must avoid some situations in which some companies use international and domestic law to be taxed nowhere.”

http://www.euronews.com/2013/02/16/make-multinationals-pay-tax-uk-and-others-urge-g20/

Conservatives are going to hate this for at least two reasons. 1) The prospect of higher taxes if corporate tax avoidance is reduced through global cooperation. 2) Global cooperation means reducing 'national sovereignty' because each country agrees to common corporate tax rules rather than having its own national rules that it can change whenever it wants to.