Fair Corporate Taxation: Why and How International Tax Rules Need to Be Changed

Abstract

Tax avoidance harms public budgets as is estimated that at least 20 per cent of corporate income tax revenues are lost due to such corporate behaviour. Furthermore, the business models used by multinational enterprises to reduce tax payments (such as letterbox-type practices) have a detrimental impact on productive investment, on workers’ involvement in management’s decisions and on collective bargaining for a fair share of the wealth. Indeed, current international tax rules do not take into account the complex business and tax strategies in which multinationals are engaged at global level. First, a move towards a unitary taxation principle is required, which means that the profits of a multinational should be determined globally and shared out between countries in proportion to the real level of economic activity. Second, a global minimum tax rate should limit tax competition between countries and raise corporate tax revenues. And finally, greater transparency about tax practices, including a breakdown of revenues and profits by country (country-by-country reporting), is needed to enable workers’ representatives to understand the tax practices of their companies.