G20 and the broken International Corporate Tax System

The report, titled “Still Broken”, finds that US corporations alone managed to shift $500-700 billion - a quarter of their annual profits - out of countries where the money was made and into a handful of low or no tax jurisdictions. This missing tax has real consequences. Across the world, falling government revenues are having a direct human cost on some of the poorest people through cuts to essential public services.

Leaders at the G20 summit are poised to announce the OECD Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS) program; the first real attempt to curb corporate tax avoidance on a global scale. However the BEPS program is not expected to properly address some of the key methods of tax avoidance such as how corporations are able to get away with using proxy ‘holding companies’ in low tax countries. The report (prepared by PSI, OXFAM, Tax Justice Network and Global Alliance for Tax Justice) is intended to remind world leaders that we will continue to fight until corporations stop placing the burden of their tax avoidance on the people and start paying a fair share.

PSI believes it’s time to build an international corporate tax system based on the public good and not national or corporate interest. PSI is a founding member of the Independent Commission of Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) which has amongst its members José Ocampo, Joseph Stiglitz, Magdelane Sepúlveda and Eva Joly.

• Read the joint press release
• Download the report Still Broken (PDF)
• Download the full research paper
• See the table of missing tax payments
• See the Missing Tax photo gallery
• More about PSI's work on tax