Base erosion and profit shifting
Base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) is a technical term referring to the negative effect of multinational companies' tax avoidance strategies on national tax bases. BEPS can be achieved through the use of transfer pricing, or, more correctly, "transfer mispricing". BEPS is used in a project headed by the OECD[1] which produced detailed reports in September 2014 in response to seven actions agreed previously.[2] BEPS is said to be an "attempt by the world’s major economies to try to rewrite the rules on corporate taxation to address the widespread perception that the [corporations] don’t pay their fair share of taxes".[3]
Controversy
Causes for controversy around this issue can be found in "gaps and inadequacies of domestic laws, insufficient controlled foreign company rules, transfer mispricing, tax treaty abuses or problems arising from hybrid mismatch arrangements".[4] The effect on countries hosting investment from multinational companies is laid out in, for example, comments made by Oxfam South Africa to the UN: "The negative impact of base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) on South Africa is evident in the escalating rates of poverty, inequality and unemployment. This continues despite some impressive developmental strides taken by the government. The reason for this is that only 1.6 out of 2 million registered companies in South Africa are active and pay their tax revenue".[5]
In India the ways that Intellectual Property rights (IPRs) and accountability and compliance costs are handled in BEPs have been assessed by a columnist in a leading daily Business Standard.[6]
The November 2014 G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, demonstrated that the chances are slim for schemes to make any additional multinational companies' tax information public.[7] Thus any proposals more ambitious than the OECD's BEPS appear impractical for now, like the Global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) for financial markets that was established after recommendations by the international Financial Stability Board and on which the G-20 has been working since 2012,[8] or Gabriel Zucman's idea for a world financial registry.[9]
At the November 2015 G-20 Antalya summit, the action plan released by the OECD in early October was adopted.[10]
Nonetheless speaking after world leaders had left the G20 summit in Turkey, a spokesperson for the anti poverty charity ActionAid said the G20 countries had failed to take the “bold action needed to end tax avoidance in developing countries”.[11]
At the 2016 G-20 Hangzhou summit it is expected that the chair country will advance the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group on the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) agenda.[12]
See also
External links
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- ↑ http://www.un.org/esa/ffd/tax/Beps/index.htm
- ↑ http://www.un.org/esa/ffd/tax/Beps/CommentsEJNandOxfamSA_BEPS.pdf
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- ↑ Khadem, Nassim, "Multinational tax details to be kept secret", Sydney Morning Herald, November 14, 2014
- ↑ "documents by the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC) for the LEI", Legal Entity Identifier Regulatory Oversight Committee (LEI ROC)
- ↑ Zucman, Gabriel (2014): "Taxing across Borders: Tracking Personal Wealth and Corporate Profits", Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 28, No. 4. (2014), pp. 121-48, doi:10.1257/jep.28.4.121,
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