Closing tax gaps - OECD launches Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting

Author: OECD

OECD’s Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) offers a global roadmap that will allow governments to collect the tax revenue they need to serve their citizens. It also gives businesses the certainty they need to invest and grow...Produced at the request of the G20 and introduced at the G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting in Moscow, the Action Plan identifies 15 specific actions that will give governments the domestic and international instruments to prevent corporations from paying little or no taxes...The Action Plan will develop a new set of standards to prevent double non-taxation. Closer international co-operation will close gaps that, on paper, allow income to ‘disappear’ for tax purposes by using multiple deductions for the same expense and “treaty-shopping”. Stronger rules on controlled foreign companies would allow countries to tax profits stashed in offshore subsidiaries.

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• Related stories: OECD releases set of actions to modernise intl. tax system & crackdown on corporate tax avoidance

Crackdown on big business tax avoidance planned

Author: Patrick Wintour, Guardian (UK)

Governments risk "global tax chaos" as they chase dwindling revenues from multinational companies unless the international tax regime is radically overhauled, according to a report commissioned by the G20 group of nations...The...report...says "a bold move by policy makers" is necessary to prevent a worsening in the position. The OECD calls it "a turning point in the history of international co-operation on tax". The report sets out 15 separate actions the international community needs to take to modernise a tax system established in the 1920s. It argues the international tax system is outmoded and unequipped to deal with mobile multinational firms that have found innumerable ways of avoiding tax often by shifting profits to low-tax countries. [refers to Google, Starbucks, Amazon, Apple]

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• Related stories: OECD releases set of actions to modernise intl. tax system & crackdown on corporate tax avoidance
• Related in-depth areas: G20 Summits in Russia & OECD report on tax avoidance
• Related companies: Amazon.com Apple Google Starbucks

Tax avoidance - an introduction

Author: compiled by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

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