It is a setback for all proponents of multilateral tax treaties: The United States is pulling back from talks about an international digital expensive. The project will be developed in the Organisation for economic development and cooperation (OECD), should be according to the will of its initiators, the major Internet companies higher and fairer taxation.
Christian Schubert
economic correspondent in Paris.
F. A. Z. Twitter
Werner Mussler
economic correspondent in Brussels.
F. A. Z.
The American Minister of Finance, Steven Mnuchin has after a lot of Back-and-Forth, the project is now repudiating. In a letter to the governments of France, great Britain, Italy and Spain, he wrote that the talks “were in a cul-de-SAC”.
The United States will not be ready, a control model to agree with the the leading us digital companies to burden in addition, said Mnuchin. It is important there is currently to do. “The governments of the world should focus their attention on the economic issues as a result of Covid-19”, – said the American Minister of Finance.
He warned also specifically in front of the national corridors in the Form of digital individual States taxes. This would sanction America with import taxes.
“provocation to all citizens of the planet”
More than 130 States had on the Basis of the OECD’s proposals on two pillars of a new international tax model is negotiated. The first pillar is mainly concerned with the digital company. You saw, that governments may tax foreign companies when they do in their countries only in sales but no physical presence.
The second column that the Federal government is particularly important, provides for minimum rates for corporate taxation. The Minister of Finance of Berlin, Paris, Rome and Madrid, had proposed in a letter recently rates from 12.5 percent to 15 percent. Mnuchin will lead discussions on this second pillar of the Fort and wrote in his letter that it was in this point “an agreement much closer”. The United States hoped that it could come to an agreement.
The question now is whether the other countries insist on both columns together. Because an international agreement could fail.
The French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was in an uproar on Thursday morning on French Radio about the Americans. “This is not just a provocation to all the governments that have negotiated at the OECD, but also to all citizens of the planet,” he said. Because the citizens felt it was legitimate that the Internet giants paid their fair tax share, particularly since “you are perhaps the only ones in the world, the Coronavirus crisis of enormous profits,” said the Minister. He deplored the American’s exit all the more, as if we had been removed after the words of the French Minister, “only inches” of an agreement.
