The first day of the G-20 Leaders Summit in Rome on Saturday achieved a first objective fulfilled: adoption, after long negotiations, of a global minimum tax on multinationals to balance the international tax system.
“After four years of an intense debate, a historical agreement has been reached on a solution based on two pillars to face fiscal challenges emerged with the digitalization and globalization of the economy,” said sources of the Italian presidency of the forum of the
Twenty powers.
The Heads of State or Government of the G-20 agreed on a global minimum tax on companies at least 15% to achieve a more fair tax system and avoid taking advantage of complacent tax schedules and do not pay taxes where they operate.
One of the most enthusiastic was the president of the United States, Joe Biden, who held the agreement and assured that the international community “will help people making companies contribute paying their share” tax.
The mechanism, which will be adopted by 2030, follows the path already drawn by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) of a system supported by two pillars.
The first fixed that the volume of the residual benefit of companies, that is, the remaining after the country where the headquarters is stayed with the tax corresponding to 10% of profitability, will be distributed among the countries where they operate.
The second establishes a minimum rate of societies of 15% for those who have a turnover of at least 750 million euros.
The OECD has already reported that 136 countries and jurisdictions, covering more than 90% of global GDP over the 140 participating in the negotiations, agreed that for the first pillar the fifter is 25% of that residual benefit, after that until
Now it was being discussed between a range between 20 and 30%.
This refers to large companies with a world turnover greater than 20,000 million euros and a profitability greater than 10%, and the distribution of benefits would be between countries where each company has incomes greater than one million euros (250,000 euros in small
state).
The objective, added the sources, is to guarantee fair, modern and effective tax rules, key to promoting investments and growth.
The leaders of this forum, whose countries accumulate 80% of the gross domestic product and 60% of the planet’s population, were physically reunited after the pandemic, since the Riad of last year had to be celebrated virtually.
For the Roman neighborhood of EUR, fully armored for the occasion, leaders spent as biden, the head of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez;
the president of France, Emmanuel Macron;
The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, or the outgoing chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, for whom this G-20 will be the last one.
From Latin America, Argentine president arrived Alberto Fernández, who denounced the high debt of his country with the International Monetary Fund, and that of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, while Mexico was represented by his chancellor, Marcelo Ebrad.
But the Summit had two absences of exception, which somehow put in check the sponsored multilateralism: that of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who by videoconference demanded reciprocal recognition of vaccines between blocks.
And China’s president, Xi Jinping, which thousands of kilometers away asked their peers to be “an example” in the reduction of carbon emissions.
Other important points addressed in the “cloud”, a modern Roman congress center, were the management of the Coronavirus pandemic and the leaders committed to distribute vaccines and immunize 70% of the population for 2022.
It is a key issue because it depends on the departure of the crisis and, therefore, the leaders posted in the photo of family with some of the “heroes” of the pandemic, doctors, nurses or civil protection workers.
On the other hand, the pressing environmental issue was spoken, on the eve of the United Nations Summit on Climate Change, which begins on Sunday at the British Glasgow.
“We have a moment now to try to take some of the nebulous commitments of Paris, solidify them in strong and rapid commitments to reduce emissions, cars and coal,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told television.
The brooch put the maximum queen of the Netherlands, which in a panel panel on SMEs and women businesswomen asked the leaders if it was done enough for them: “I would say we can do more,” Zanjó.
