Event description
The negotiations of a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC) are entering a decisive phase. As governments move toward the zero draft, the struggle is not only over tax rules, institutional design, or negotiating procedure, but a struggle over meaning too.
This webinar series organised by the Tax Justice Network explores four contested definitions that could shape the future of international tax cooperation: harmful tax practices, foreseeable relevance, value creation, and illicit financial flows. Each term may sound technical, but each carries major political consequences. How these terms are defined will determine how successful the UN tax convention will be in strengthening tax sovereignty, supporting a fair allocation of taxing rights, expanding transparency and build an inclusive framework capable of addressing tax abuse and escaping the limits of the previous century..
Across four sessions, experts from policy, research, government, and civil society will unpack the origins of these definitions, the disputes surrounding them, and the choices now facing negotiators. The series asks a simple but urgent question: who gets to shape the definitions that will shape the lives of people everywhere, for generations to come?
Register for one or more of the webinars here
Harmful tax practices
Thursday 28 May 2026
8:00am New York / 1:00pm UK / 14:00pm CET / 3:00pm Nairobi
Tax practices adopted by one country often have extraterritorial effects, shaping other countries’ ability to enforce their own tax rules and pursue policy goals such as tax progressivity, a fair treatment of all taxpayers and citizens, and the financing of public services. Since the 1990s, OECD countries have sought to address harmful tax practices. A key moment was the OECD’s 1998 Harmful Tax Competition, which led to the creation of the Forum on Harmful Tax Practices which was later subsumed into BEPS Action 5 and the Inclusive Framework. Decades later, the OECD process has failed to curb harmful tax practices – triggering the pursuit of a different approach at the UN now underway.
From their inception, however, OECD-led initiatives received criticism that the criteria used to identify harmful regimes are self-serving: regimes that affect the bulk of OECD countries are weeded out, yet regimes adopted by OECD countries with detrimental effects on Global South countries are left untouched. Thus, in addition to facing criticism for their unfairness, they also created concerns around their effectiveness. As the UN negotiations of the harmful tax practices commitment have shown, a fundamental reconsideration of the concept of harmful tax practices is long overdue. An inclusive and universal approach to tax cooperation requires new ways to look at the negative spillovers felt abroad from national tax policy making. It also requires more transparency on the local societal costs of harmful tax practices, which are often hidden from the public eye.
This panel will briefly revisit past efforts, examine how the issue is being addressed in current negotiations at the United Nations, and explore how a more inclusive and effective framework for tackling harmful tax practices might be built, starting with the current formulation of the harmful tax practices commitment in the Framework Convention.
For more information on this panel including featured speakers click here
Foreseeable relevance
Friday 29 May 2026
8:00am New York / 1:00pm UK / 2:00pm CET / 3:00pm Nairobi
Exchange of information is a crucial pillar of international tax cooperation and an important area for future international tax governance under the UN tax convention. The current negotiations continue to debate how this new governance regime should relate to pre-existing instruments, standards, and norms, and the extent to which it should be grounded in the same basic rules that underpin the current system.
This debate is particularly significant given that, in the most recent publicly available draft of the Convention, language from existing standards was directly incorporated into the text. This includes provisions on confidentiality and the principle of “foreseeable relevance,” under which countries are required to exchange tax information only if it is foreseeably relevant to the enforcement of tax laws in the requesting country. Such standard currently appears in a bracketed form, and during negotiations some delegates noted that it does not adequately meet the needs of developing countries and has been applied in a rigid way to prevent information exchange at the fullest extent possible.
This debate reminds us that the UN tax convention is an opportunity to assess existing frameworks, examine their strengths and limitations, and identify areas for improvement. While building on what already exists may be valuable, the mere existence of an institution does not justify its direct transposition into the UN tax convention without careful consideration of its potential shortcomings. This panel will evaluate current instruments and frameworks, their merits, and their limitations in order to contribute to the development of an exchange of information regime that is inclusive and universal.
Value creation
Monday 1 June 2026
8:00am New York / 1:00pm UK / 2:00am CET / 3:00pm Nairobi
Disputes over who creates value – and where – are central to distributive conflicts, from struggles over wages and unpaid care work, to debates over where multinational corporations should be taxed and so on. Yet it was only about a decade ago that these debates entered international tax negotiations in a systematic way. In 2013, in the context of the OECD/G20 BEPS Action Plan, the G20 called on the OECD to align taxation with value creation. Although framed at a high level, this mandate went on to shape much of the subsequent debate on base erosion and profit shifting. “Value creation” has since become both a central organising concept and a major battleground in contemporary international tax policymaking. At the same time, the concept has been met with sustained criticism, particularly from developing countries. Throughout the BEPS process, the mantra of “aligning transfer pricing outcomes with value creation” was often seen as reinforcing existing asymmetries in the international tax system. Critics also argued that the concept could enable profit shifting to low-tax jurisdictions.
In the current negotiations for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC), the “fair allocation of taxing rights” is emerging as one of the most fundamental commitments states are expected to assume under the Convention. As the draft text currently stands, delegates may agree to language stating that taxing rights over income, or parts of income, belong, inter alia, to jurisdictions in which value is created. Against this backdrop, and given the concept’s contested history, this panel will revisit the battleground of “value creation”: examining its origins in international taxation, tracing its evolution across the BEPS process, and exploring why it is re-emerging in current UN negotiations. The panel will unpack the major critiques and competing interpretations surrounding the term, while also engaging with arguments from those who seek to reinterpret it in ways that better reflect where real economic activity and social contributions occur. Ultimately, it will evaluate whether “value creation” has any merit as a foundation for constructing a commitment to the fair allocation of taxing rights under the UN tax convention.
Illicit financial flows
Tuesday 2 June 2026
10:30am UK / 11:30am CET / :12:30pm Nairobi / 4:00pm New Delhi
Illicit financial flows are widely recognised as a major barrier to development. Reflecting this, their reduction was included in 2015 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals under target 16.4. Yet this broad consensus masks a long-standing dispute over what the term actually means, especially which regard to tax related flows. Some countries and international organisations advocate narrow definitions, limiting illicit financial flows to strictly illegal activities, meaning that the term only covers tax evasion. By contrast, African countries, particularly through the High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa (the Mbeki Panel), have advanced a broader approach, which includes not only illegal flows but also flows from aggressive tax avoidance. This broader understanding was reflected in several reports and recommendations by the United Nations, including in the conceptual definition elaborated in 2020 by the UNCTAD-UNODC Task Force on the statistical measurement of illicit financial flows. The UN tax convention is a unique opportunity to build upon these efforts, translating these recommendations into a clear and actionable legal commitment. This panel will trace the evolution of the concept, revisit the key disputes over its meaning, and examine how these debates are re-emerging in current negotiations on the framework convention, first in discussions on a protocol and its scope, and more recently in formulating the relevant commitment in the framework convention itself.