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White House says G7 leaders will endorse 15% global minimum corporate tax


US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, seen here in a White House briefing, is due to meet China's top diplomat in Zurich. Photo: Reuters.

Tweet from White House security adviser says top-level gathering in Cornwall will promote unprecedented move

Leaders of the G7 nations will back US President Joe Biden’s proposal for a global minimum corporate tax of 15%.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Twitter Friday that “America is rallying the world to make big multinational corporations pay their fair share so we can invest in our middle class at home”.

The U.S. Treasury in May proposed a global minimum corporate tax of at least 15% to try to end a downward spiral of corporate tax rates. 

By supporting the move, major economies are aiming to discourage multinationals from shifting profits – and tax revenues – to low-tax countries regardless of where their sales are made. 

Global tax rules date back to the 1920s and struggle with multinational tech giants that sell services remotely and attribute much of their profits to intellectual property held in low-tax jurisdictions.

Negotiations

US tech giants such as Facebook and Amazon could benefit from the agreement to create a global minimum 15% corporate tax rate if the final deal also scraps increasingly popular digital services taxes, according to industry lobbyists.

The decision had been expected after G7 finance officials backed a tax rate of at least 15% during a meeting on June 5. The US Treasury has said the G7’s endorsement will provide momentum for advancing negotiations towards a broader G20 finance meeting in July in Italy.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her counterparts from Germany, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa backed the move in a column published Wednesday by the Washington Post.

They said they were confident that the global minimum tax rate could ultimately be pushed higher than 15%, citing “the ambition of the discussions thus far.”

  • Reporting by Reuters

Mark McCord

Mark McCord is a financial journalist with more than three decades experience writing and editing at global news wires including Bloomberg and AFP, as well as daily newspapers in Hong Kong, Sydney and Melbourne. He has covered some of the biggest breaking news events in recent years including the Enron scandal, the New York terrorist attacks and the Iraq War. He is based in the UK. You can tweet to Mark at @MarkMcC64371550.

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