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Economics

打击企业避税的更佳手段

Mar 8, 2018 José Antonio Ocampo

发自纽约——在过去的几年中，“巴拿马文件”和“天堂文件”等一系列资料的曝光将全球化的黑暗软肋公诸于世，并激起了人们对全球各地避税者的愤怒谴责。一方面是普通劳动者别无选择只能交纳税款；另一方面跨国企业和富人花点小钱就能逃避税赋。

而当下这些企业避税方案的最令人震惊之处莫过于它们都是合法的。当跨国企业创建子公司时，这些实体都会被认为是法律上独立的。母公司可以再设置及其子公司之间的交易价格，从而将其利润归集于低税收国家而不是实际发生经济活动的地方。

这种“转移定价”体系导致各国争相降低企业税率。而随着美国将该税率从35％降到了21％，全球性的杀价竞争似乎有愈演愈烈之势。事实上印度，墨西哥，巴西和其他国家的政治家们已经呼吁本国实施减税以保持竞争力，吸引外国投资以及创造或保存就业机会。

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José Antonio Ocampo

Writing for PS since 2006
52 Commentaries

José Antonio Ocampo, a former United Nations under-secretary-general, is Minister of Finance and Public Credit of Colombia, a professor at Columbia University, Chair of the UN Committee for Development Policy, and Chair of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation. He is the author of Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System (Oxford University Press, 2017) and co-author (with Luis Bértola) of The Economic Development of Latin America since Independence (Oxford University Press, 2012).

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Robert Bruce Mar 10, 2018

One of the clearest explanations yet of why the corporate tax system for multinationals is fundamentally broken. Of course what is really needed is a new #GlobalPartnership between major nations to set out an internationally agreed structure for fair taxation of Global trade. Among the many insurmountable barriers to making this happen, two stand out above all others :

1) The jurisdiction of international bodies over domestic economies is not considered acceptable by the biggest sovereign nations, and particularly the United States, without whom any truly Global deal is impossible.

2) There is no incentive for multinational companies to comply with such a system, when at the moment they can simply play one country off against another to avoid paying any tax at all. As the saying goes "Turkeys don't vote for Christmas".

There is a solution to both these problems, but it requires bold new thinking and a willingness to cooperate in a much more formal #GlobalPartnership of key economic powers (which would have to include USA, EU, and China to be viable).
Properly constituted, such a partnership could create a dual-track set of rules for Global trade:

The fast track would be available to large international corporations, who could be offered free frictionless access to all member countries markets, in return for agreeing to abide by common Global standards and regulation, including fair rules for Global taxation in all the countries within which they operate. Meanwhile the slow track would apply to all other inernational and domestic firms who could continue to operate under their own national laws, using exsting WTO rules.

Some of the really big advantages of such a system are:

- It largely preserves national sovereignty over domestic markets as now
- New Global requirements could be set at higher levels than national standards (to prevent accusations of unfair competition, or undermining of existing national standards )
- Smaller companies could continue to trade as now, but would not benefit from frictionless access to the Global market. They could however choose to join over time, if they are willing to accept regulation to the new Global standards.
- It offers a simple pathway to a regulated Global market with the huge promise of access to 7 billion consumers, once the Partnership expands to include all countries in decades to come.

Such an approach may seem very optimistic, but its key strength is that it can be built up gradually, adding new countries as and when they are ready to join the regulated Global market, and adding more companies as and when they see the huge advantages of scale available from joining the biggest regulated single market in human history. And of course it would finally fix the throny issue of international taxation, by providing real incentives for companies to submit to a system of Global regulation.
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Paul Daley Mar 8, 2018

Not entirely a new idea. The United States taxed US companies on their worldwide income before the latest tax bill. The novelty would lie in sharing the tax base on the basis of sales or something similar. That will forestall complaints by foreign companies that they are being taxed at higher rates than domestic competitors.
And it should be easily expandable, if countries like the US wish to join.
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