Fernando Haddad and Bruno Le Maire during a press conference at the IMF headquarters in Washington, April 17, 2024 (AFP/Jim WATSON)
The Brazilian presidency of the G20 wants to implement an international tax affecting the wealthiest households, after the agreements already obtained on the taxation of digital giants and multinationals, calling for the fight against inequalities.
“Without improved international cooperation, those at the top will continue to find ways to avoid existing tax systems,” Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad, whose country chairs the G20 this year, said on Wednesday. during a press conference organized during the IMF and World Bank meetings.
He called in particular for more transparency and an exchange of information between states.
“Inequalities are increasing and sustainable development objectives risk not being achieved. For these reasons, I called for a new globalization 2.0 during the G20 meeting. It is in this context that international cooperation takes place on taxation”, he further underlined.
Brazil, led by left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has made the issue of taxing the richest one of the main topics of its G20 presidency. And in Canada, Justin Trudeau’s government unveiled new taxes on the richest on Tuesday to finance housing in particular.
At the global level, generating additional revenue is all the more necessary as “we are facing a global social and environmental crisis”, added the minister.
States, in fact, must both try to maintain a manageable level of debt, while making significant investments to successfully complete the ecological transition and the fight against global warming.
– Path strewn with pitfalls –
More than 3,000 billion dollars are currently needed each year to face the challenges of global warming, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said earlier.
But the road will be strewn with pitfalls to convince countries to tax their richest citizens.
Bruno Le Maire in front of the IMF headquarters in Washington, April 17, 2024 (AFP/SAUL LOEB)
“This proposal has the support of the G20 presidency”, but also that “of the French government and many European countries, and I think it is a very good starting point”, assured the French Minister of the Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, during a joint press conference with his Brazilian counterpart.
“The fight for international taxation is a difficult, fair and necessary fight,” he previously told journalists.
American President Joe Biden, too, pleaded before Congress in March to tax billionaires.
A tax targeting the 3,000 richest people on the planet would bring in nearly $250 billion, according to a report published Tuesday by the NGO Global Citizen, which cites this tax among the six potential sources of revenue for states to finance their investments in the climate transition.
The wealth of the richest people has collectively increased by $2.7 billion per day since 2020, and they emit on average a million times more carbon dioxide than an average person, details the NGO.
– “International tax revolution” –
This new taxation would constitute the “third pillar which should make it possible to complete the international tax revolution”, further underlined Bruno Le Maire.
An agreement, in fact, has already been reached in October 2021, to tax digital giants and impose a minimum tax on multinationals.
And this is far from having been ratified by each of the 136 signatory countries. In the United States, for example, President Joe Biden supports this reform, but the very divided Congress has still not adopted it.
In October 2021, 136 countries, including China and the United States, under the aegis of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), reached agreement on an international agreement, which includes two ” pillars”.
“Pillar 1” targets multinationals, and in particular digital giants, and consists of reallocating part of their profit tax to the countries in which they actually carry out their activities, and no longer only where their head offices are located.
“Pillar 2” corresponds to the establishment of a minimum effective tax rate of at least 15% on the profits of multinationals, to sound the death knell for tax havens and tax companies where they make their recipes.
© 2024 AFP
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