DW News published this video item, entitled “G20 agrees on global minimum corporate tax of 15% | DW News” – below is their description.
Members of the world’s richest nations, the G20, have reached an agreement on a global minimum corporate tax of 15 percent.
The deal aims to prevent countries from excessively reducing tax rates to attract investment. Tech giants like Amazon and Google would no more be able to shop around for the most attractive tax base. The new tax could be in place by 2023. But some countries – like Ireland, Estonia and Hungary – have not signed up.
Still German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz is optimistic. He described the deal as “colossal progress” in tackling tax avoidance.
It was an historic setting for an historic deal. Finance ministers from the G20 member countries came together in Venice, including China, the USA and Germany.
The group represents the world’s largest economies, and it now has a common goal – to set a minimum tax rate for companies of at least 15 percent.
Every major economy already wants multinational corporations to pay a fair share of tax. Online retailer Amazon’s business boomed during the pandemic last year. In Germany alone, it saw a 33 percent rise in sales. But the online giant has not paid any corporate tax. That’s because it pays taxes for all of its European business in the low-tax Luxembourg.
But German corporations, like car manufacturers, will also have to pay taxes wherever they do business going forward. The European Union wants a similar tax treaty across the whole EU, but so far Ireland, Hungary and Estonia are resisting it.
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