The coronavirus pandemic is a crisis for everyone. All around us people are affected — our loved ones, our neighbours, our colleagues, our communities. 

Today, the European Parliament agreed a resolution calling for a “joint, ambitious EU position” in the OECD-led negotiations on how to address international corporate tax challenges in a digitalised era. These negotiations provide a historic opportunity to adapt corporate tax rules for the 21st century, and to strengthen tax justice at global level.

There is a real risk that the OECD’s proposal on the application of a new minimum corporate tax rate will only benefit a handful of mainly rich countries where multinational companies are headquartered. Countless other rich and poor countries where these corporations do business will not be able to recover lost taxes.

Under this new proposal, companies’ profits and their ability to shift them offshore will barely be affected and consequently developing countries will only see a very small increase in their corporate tax revenues. 

European Union finance ministers have removed the British territory of Bermuda, Barbados, and the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba from the EU blacklist of tax havens today.

"Aside from obvious questions raised by Paul Romer’s resignation, serious concerns remain around the Doing Business report. Hopefully the next chief economist will be given the mandate to bring coherence and fairness to this ranking."

The upcoming EU tax haven blacklist has to include at least 35 countries, including notorious tax havens such as Switzerland and Bermuda, in order to be effective, Oxfam finds in a new report published today. The analysis also shows that at least 4 EU countries would be blacklisted if the EU were to apply its own criteria to member states.