New tax rules to be announced Friday at the Group of 20 summit in Russia will limit multinational corporations’ ability to avoid paying taxes, officials said, reported by UPI.
A communique to be issued at the end of the meeting is expected to say the leaders of the world’s 20 richest economies agreed to overhaul their tax laws so multinational corporations such as Apple Inc. and Starbucks Corp. can’t legally avoid paying taxes by operating subsidiaries in certain countries, The New York Times said.
The idea behind the communique is for countries to better coordinate tax treaties to close loopholes multinational corporations exploit by registering in tax havens such as Delaware and the Cayman Islands, the Times said.
Starbucks last year paid no corporate tax in Britain despite generating sales of nearly $630 million. The company volunteered to pay more in the future.
Apple, the most profitable U.S. technology company, avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a complex web of subsidiaries.
The G20 communique is also expected to say governments intend to coordinate the tapering off of monetary stimulus programs such as the Federal Reserve’s so-called quantitative easing, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak said.
The quantitative-easing policy, involving massive bond buying, spurred a flood of money into emerging economies. But the planned pullback — which the Fed said would happen only when the U.S. labor market improves and the U.S. economy is growing more strongly — is feared to hurt the emerging markets as investors return money to the United States to take advantage of rising interest rates and less risk.
Chinese Deputy Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said Thursday Washington had a responsibility to look beyond its own domestic economic concerns in making such economic policy decisions.
“We hope that as the issuing country of the largest reserve currency in the world, the United States, should be mindful of the spillover effects of its macroeconomic policies,” he said.
Also at the summit, British Prime Minister David Cameron denied he was snubbed when the press attache for summit host Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly dismissed Britain as “just a small island” and saying, “no one pays any attention to them.”
The comment, which attache Dmitry Peskov later denied making, was reported by the BBC.
A spokesman for Cameron said the alleged remark “highlights how a small island with great people can achieve a big footprint in the world.”
