$475bn lost to US-backed global gag order shielding corporate tax cheaters

A US-backed global gag order¹ preventing governments from revealing the names of multinational corporations found shifting billions into tax havens has caused countries to miss out on over US$475 billion in corporate tax from 2016 to 2021, the Tax Justice Network’s research reveals today.²

The tax lost is far more than the amount urgently needed for the $300 billion climate finance fund³ that countries committed to in 2024. “Governments claim there isn’t enough money for climate action but as this report clearly shows, there is – it is in the wrong hands”, said Greenpeace International’s Nina Stros.

A key driver of the losses is a dramatic escalation in tax abuse by US multinational corporations set loose by Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the research finds. US multinational corporations are now shifting twice as much profit out of the countries where they operate in and into the US, but are paying even less tax in the US than they were before Trump’s tax cuts were introduced.⁴

They are responsible for 29 per cent of all corporate tax losses suffered yearly by all countries.

The biggest loser by far to US multinationals’ tax abuse is the US itself – which has long backed the decision to keep the public in the dark on the profit shifting activities of multinational corporations. The EU and Australia began to partially lift the global gag order locally this year despite increasingly aggressive lobbying from US multinationals in particular.⁵ In June this year, all countries but the US committed in a UN outcome document to take steps towards lifting the global gag order by evaluating the option of a global public database for the reports in the future.⁶

Efforts to adequately tax US and other multinational corporations will be front and centre this month at a negotiating session in Nairobi where countries will continue work on a world-first United Nations tax convention.⁷ Transparency measures to ensure fair access to information are part of the package, and countries can now more ambitiously commit to lift the global gag order fully, ensuring every member state – and their citizens – would benefit.

The convention is largely seen as countries’ last resort to push back against the new Trump administration’s sweeping threats and attacks on the tax sovereignty of nations – that is, on the right of a nation to decide who to tax within its borders, how much and what for.⁸

The work at the UN and the work of the Trump administration present two competing visions on how to fill the vacuum left by this year’s collapse of a 100-years-long consensus in international tax – a collapse triggered by both the start of formal negotiations on a UN tax convention to replace the older order and by the Trump administration’s exploding of the decades-long, US-dominated OECD process.⁹

On the one side, the Trump administration is attempting to enforce a pre-League of Nations, might-is-right approach where a corporation operating globally can only be taxed by the country in which it is headquartered – a complete reversal to the US’s position declared in a presidential memorandum on day one of Trump’s second term.¹⁰

On the other side, the UN tax convention would ideally require corporations operating globally to be taxed proportionally by the countries in which they operate and make their profits, based on ensuring a “fair allocation of taxing rights” between countries that respects and bolsters countries’ tax sovereignty – a commitment agreed to last year in the pre-negotiations phase of the work.¹¹

The Tax Justice Network identifies two factors that will help determine which vision wins out. First, fully lifting the global gag order, by implementing public country by country reporting¹², is a necessary step to securing the transparency needed to be able to measure and to ensure fair allocations. Second, countries must replace the 100-year-old “pay where you say” approach used to tax multinational corporations with a “pay where you play” approach – by implementing a unitary tax approach¹³ – so that fair allocations can be based on where multinational corporations genuinely operate instead of where they declare their profits on paper.

Previous research has demonstrated the hidden and sometimes deadly costs of weakened tax sovereignty, linking global tax abuse by corporations and the superrich to over 60,000 preventable deaths among children under the age of five every year.¹⁴ Human Rights Watch’s Sarah Saadoun said: “For many countries, revenue losses under the current international tax system are not just a fiscal issue — they are a human rights crisis”.

Human Rights Watch, Greenpeace, global union federation PSI, Patriotic Millionaires UK, renowned economists and tax justice campaigners from around the world commenting on the Tax Justice Network’s research findings today are calling on governments to commit to the UN tax convention and to tax transparency on multinational corporations. (see all comments further below)

Tax Justice Network Chief Executive Alex Cobham said:

“The world is at a fork in the road. One path leads to tax subjugation under Trump and US multinationals, while the other leads to a collective defence of tax sovereignty at the UN that protects every country’s taxing rights.

“We’re all being plundered at a catastrophic rate, but instead of Vikings or Conquistadors violently raiding villages, it’s US corporations quietly robbing our treasuries, including that of the US itself. Every year, US multinationals rob the world of an amount of tax that is worth twice all the gold and silver that Spanish colonisers plundered out of the Americas over a span of 150 years.¹⁵

“Every teacher fired, every nurse denied better pay, every struggling worker taxed more in the name of ‘balancing the books’ ought to be outraged today by their government’s decades-long tax surrender. By reclaiming those revenues, we can invest in our societies so we can all live better lives. Democracy started as a fight for tax rights: no taxation without representation. Our message to our governments is clear: get up and fight for our tax rights.”

-ENDS-

The biggest losers to the global gag order

The biggest loser to the global gag order is the US itself, which is being urged by US multinational corporations to preserve. Among the other biggest losers are countries like the UK, Germany and France where heated debates on balancing budgets and paying for public services have been on-going.

Some of the biggest losers, and the amount of corporate tax they lost from 2016 to 2021 to the global gag order, are listed here:

• US: US$158.5 billion
• France: €27.3 billion (US$32.3 billion)
• Germany: €25.7 billion (US$30.3 billion)
• India: ₹1.805 trillion (US$24.4 billion)
• UK: £10.8 billion (US$14.8 billion)
• Mexico: MEX$254 billion (US$12.5 billion)
• South Africa: 9 billion (US$2.8 billion)

See the report’s accompanying excel file for all countries losses to the global gag order.

Comments from experts and campaigners from around the world

Greenpeace International’s Political Unit Global Senior Policy Expert Nina Stros said:

“Ten years after the Paris Agreement, countries are still falling short on their climate ambition, even after global temperatures exceeded the 1.5°C limit last year. At COP we see negotiations for climate action and finance often ending in empty or inadequate promises and now, more than ever, it’s time to act.”

“Governments claim there isn’t enough money for climate action but as this report clearly shows, there is – it is in the wrong hands. It is outrageous that people must bear the brunt of a crisis they didn’t cause while the wealthiest individuals and multinational corporations are allowed to pollute, hoard wealth and escape taxation. The UN Tax Convention is a historic chance to change the rules, make the richest polluters pay their fair share, and unlock trillions for climate action and sustainable development.”

Human Rights Watch’s Senior Researcher and Advocate on Poverty & Inequality Sarah Saadoun said:

“For many countries, revenue losses under the current international tax system are not just a fiscal issue — they are a human rights crisis.  The drain on public budgets means that even those with strong economic growth struggle to deliver commensurate gains in education, health care, and social security. Governments are also pushed to rely on taxes that hit the poorest hardest, even as the world’s richest individuals and corporations amass fortunes larger than national budgets. Around the world, young people are demanding an economy that upholds their rights. The world should listen by rejecting a might-makes-right approach to taxation and supporting a UN treaty that aligns global taxation with human rights.”

ICRICT Commissioner Jayati Ghosh, development economist and professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said:

“Making multinationals publicly disclose their country-by-country reports would increase tax revenues and curb tax abuse without the need for changes to tax laws. The UN Framework Convention will provide a unique opportunity to establish public country-by-country reporting as a unified coordinated standard, reducing compliance burdens and creating fair competition for all.”

Public Services International’s General Secretary Daniel Bertossa said:

“Trump and his billionaire buddies protect tax secrecy so corporations can continue to make big bucks, all whilst claiming there is no money for health, education or pay rises for workers.

“Unions have been fighting back against this ploy for decades – getting tax transparency over the line in Australia and elsewhere.

“Workers know who has the money: public country-by-country reporting helps return it to those who created the wealth to fund public services and a decent life for all.”

Patriotic Millionaires UK’s member Phil White said:

“Mega-rich corporations which prioritise financial engineering and playing the tax system end up ripping off the UK and everyone who lives here.

“The £10.8 billion that’s been funnelled away by the unscrupulous tax behaviour of large multinationals is equivalent to the UK losing out on around £6 million pounds every single day – imagine the difference that could have made to our crumbling public services and NHS.

“Working people don’t get to use every trick in the book to avoid paying their taxes, and neither should anyone else. Society cannot thrive when those who have the most pay the least. Those dodging taxes, individuals and companies alike, should be made to contribute properly to the countries that gave them their profits.”

Tax Justice Network Africa’s Executive Director Chenai Mukumba said:

“African countries are taking proactive steps to advance tax justice through initiatives such as TJNA’s Anti-IFFs Policy Tracker which monitors national progress in implementing policies to curb IFFs. However, domestic efforts alone are not enough. It is crucial that the global system plays its part by ensuring fairness, transparency, and cooperation in international tax governance. The findings of this year’s State of Tax Justice report reaffirm what African countries have long known – that opacity fuels inequality. This is not just about numbers; it is about schools, hospitals, and livelihoods denied. As the world negotiates a new tax and international financial architecture under the United Nations Tax Convention, we must place transparency, accountability, and equity at the heart of reform.”

Latindadd’s Tax Justice Coordinator Adrian Falco said:

“El diagnóstico nunca estuvo tan claro en relación a las necesidades de financiamiento para la generación de políticas públicas que piensen en quienes menos tienen y más necesitan. Los recursos necesarios están, pero concentrados y ocultos. Aquí es donde un factor extra se pone en discusión, la voluntad política de los gobiernos de trabajar al más alto nivel para revertir este saqueo fiscal. No es un tema de recursos escasos sino de prioridades dejadas de lado. Este informe de TJN ayuda a desarmar el mito de la escasez y aporta luz a un proceso opaco, el de las multinacionales que se han apropiado del mundo. Al final del día la calidad de lo que se recauda, en relación a de quien se recauda, está asociado al sostenimiento de la cohesión social y a la calidad de la democracia. Si los que menos tienen pagan proporcionalmente más que los que más tienen, el contrato social no está funcionado. Si quienes más tienen están amparados por países que les permiten ocultar información y no pagar impuestos en donde generan la riqueza, el contrato social está roto y sobre eso hay que trabajar en el futuro.”

France-based CCFD-Terre Solidaire’s Advocacy Officer Ryad Selmani said:

“While the French political debate is becoming increasingly heated over budgetary issues, France continues, unsurprisingly, to be one of the countries that loses out most from international tax evasion by multinationals and the wealthiest individuals. However, it is in the UN Tax Convention that the desperate search for billions of euros may find its solution. If France truly wants to restore some semblance of national tax justice and break out of its budgetary impasse, then it must urgently and seriously take the road to Nairobi and finally become a helping force in reforming international tax rules at the UN. It is not too late for France to wake up.”

Tax Justice Network Australia Spokesperson Dr Mark Zirnsak said:

“Given the vital role that public country-by-country reporting of the financial and tax affairs of multinational corporations plays in tackling tax abuse, other governments should follow the lead of the Australian Government and pass laws to implement the measure. They should go further than the Australian Government and require the disclosure to apply to all the jurisdictions where the multinational corporation has a presence, real or artificially constructed. The Australian Government would then need to catch up to those governments. It is hard to combat what you cannot see.”

Germany-based Netzwerk Steuergerechtigkeit’s Coordinator and Scientific Officer Christoph Trautvetter said:

“In Germany, the biggest and most profitable companies from the US continue to pay as little as three percent of tax on the profits earned here according to our estimates. At the same time a recent investigation shows that the German administration quietly shied away from applying anti-abuse rules against those same companies for the last seven years. This is a stark reminder that a broad global alliance is necessary to stop the biggest bullies from getting the biggest benefits.”

Mexico-based Fundar’s Coordinator Iván Benumea said:

“In recent years, Mexico has undertaken decisive measures to combat tax evasion from wealthy taxpayers. However, the most recent report from the Tax Justice Network underscores that Mexico must also champion international cooperation and enhance fiscal transparency for multinational enterprises. Global financial opacity carries direct and profound implication for Mexico. The revenue foregone due to international tax abuses is equivalent to 5.5 times the 2025 budget of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. Therefore, adopting public country-by-country reporting presents a clear strategic opportunity for Mexico. Taking a leading role in the UN tax convention negotiations to advance this measure would align directly with Mexico’s national interests.”

Tax Justice UK’s Interim Deputy Director Fariya Mohiuddin said:

“The UK is missing out on billions of pounds of much needed tax revenue because of an outdated global tax system that is rigged to favour powerful companies. The global tax system needs rewiring so that corporations are transparent about the money they make in each country, and aren’t able to shift their profits into tax havens. This ultimately starves our schools, hospitals and communities of the cash they need. The UK government should give its full backing to the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation to make tax rules fairer, to take back our tax sovereignty to ensure billions more in tax revenue is collected to invest in our public services.”

South Africa-based Alternative Information & Development Centre’s Senior Programme Officer Jaco Oelofsen said:

 “This report comes at a time when tax justice is more relevant for ordinary South Africans than ever before, as national outrage over a proposed two percentage point VAT increase this year led to the first postponement and redrafting of the national budget in our democratic history. The Tax Justice Network’s figures show that countries like South Africa should not be forced to choose between cutting public sector budgets or putting more taxes on the working class; instead, we need to be demanding that multinational corporations show us what they pay, and pay us what they owe!”

Fair Tax Foundation’s Chief Executive Paul Monaghan said:

“Where mandatory public country-by-country reporting has already been introduced, there is evidence of reduced use of tax havens, reduced profit shifting, increased effective tax rates and increased domestic tax revenue mobilisation. Most impacted businesses simply embrace the need for more tax transparency and move on without making a fuss, especially in Europe. Some even go the extra mile and willingly disclose all taxes contributed in each country in which they operate, not just corporate income tax. Unfortunately, multinationals based in the US are currently amongst the least progressive when it comes to the need to accept that tax transparency is part of the licence to operate granted by society, and is needed for the efficient functioning of markets. Institutional investors, asset managers and ratings agencies are salivating at the prospect of accessing such data for the first time and being able to form a more rounded view of company tax conduct. Businesses that refuse to embrace tax transparency are going to find themselves rightly penalised by investors.”

Notes to Editor

View the report

Investors responsible for trillions of dollars of assets have repeatedly called on the OECD to change its international standard on country by country reporting to make the reports public. Shareholders at Amazon have attempted in the past to push through resolutions requiring the companies to voluntarily make their reports public.

A few multinational corporations, like Phillips, Lush, Iberdrola and Watches of Switzerland, are already voluntarily making their reports public, either directly or by adopting accreditation schemes like the international Fair Tax Mark and voluntary transparency standards like the GRI Tax Standard.

Notes

1. Governments started receiving detailed reports from multinational corporations – known as country by country reporting – in 2016 on where they are booking profits, exposing those booking their profits in tax havens and revealing how much they are cheating on tax by. The reports, required by an international standard introduced by the OECD in 2015 and first championed by the Tax Justice Network in 2003, were meant to be published publicly to serve as a deterrent but corporate lobbying successfully required the data to be anonymised after it is collected by governments and before it is made public. The standard barred any government from making the data public in any non-anonymised form. This in effect contorted the standard from a transparency measure into a global gag order. The anonymised version of the reports make it possible for the public to see how much corporate tax is being underpaid, but impossible to identify the multinational corporations doing the cheating, hence removing the deterrence effect of the transparency measure. The US is understood to have long opposed public by country reporting, dating back to the original G8 agreement in 2013 to mandate the OECD to produce a standard. More recently, Republican members of the US House of Representatives continue to push an appropriations bill that withholds funding from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) if it doesn’t drop its tax transparency requirement (which is much narrower than public country by country reporting but does require tax information at a country level). Presumably this Republican opposition (dating back to FASB’s decision in December 2023) has at least in part emboldened US multinational corporations to openly lobby against Australia’s partial lifting of the global gag order locally, and perhaps also the quite widespread refusal of some US multinational corporations to comply with the opening phase of EU’s partial lifting of the global gag order. Because the reports collected by governments track the global movements of multinational corporation’s profits, the reports collected in one country, especially if that country serves as a popular destination for multinational corporations’ headquarter offices, often expose profit shifting and corporate tax abuse suffered by many other countries too. For this reason, campaigners have called and continue to call on Australia and EU to expand their narrow lifting of the global gag order. See note 11 for more information.
2. The 2025 edition of the Tax Justice Network’s State of Tax Justice was published on Tuesday 4 November 2025 here. The report finds that simply making the names of tax cheating multinational corporations public – by making public their country by country reports (see note 1) – would prevent over a quarter (28%) of corporate tax losses suffered to multinational corporations using tax havens, the Tax Justice Network’s latest modelling shows, based on behavioural changes seen among EU banks who were required to publicly disclose such reports in the past. Had governments not withheld from the public the reports they’ve collected from 2016 to 2021, US$474.6 billion of the US$1.7 trillion lost in corporate tax to tax havens over that period would have been collected. This revenue gain would have been the result of the deterrent effect alone with no additional effort or resourcing required from governments to recover the tax.
3. More information on the $300 billion climate finance fund countries agreed at COP29 in 2024 is available here. It is worth noting that many experts and campaigners, including the Tax Justice Network, agree that the fund is too small to meet countries climate finance needs. A study published earlier this year by the Tax Justice Network found countries can raise the trillions needed to cover a wider range of estimates on countries’ climate finance needs with billions left over to spare on domestic needs by curbing global tax abuse and minimally taxing the upper crust of extreme wealth of the superrich.
4. By hiding the identities of multinational corporations increasingly cheating on tax, the global gag order allowed to go unnoticed a dramatic escalation in corporate tax abuse by US multinational corporations set loose by Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which the Tax Justice Network’s report exposes today. US multinational corporations were shifting twice as much profit out of countries where they operate and into the US in 2021 than they were in 2016 before Trump’s tax cut act. However, despite the record levels of profits being rerouted into the US from around the world today, multinational corporations are paying less tax to the US government than they were before Trump’s act. US multinational corporations are today booking 74% more profits in the US compared to 2016, but shockingly, paying 8% less tax compared to 2016. US multinational corporations are now responsible for 29 per cent of all corporate tax losses suffered annually by all countries, and have cost countries – including the US – a total of $495 billion in lost corporate tax from 2016 to 2021. The US is by far the biggest loser to US multinational corporation’s Trump-sponsored escalation, having lost over $271 billion in corporate tax from 2016 to 2021 – which is more than half of all the tax losses suffered to US multinational corporations in this time.
5. Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, Hitachi and Novartis are just a few examples of multinational corporations refusing to comply with a new EU directive that narrowly lifts the global gag order within the EU. While a majority (59%) of multinational corporations are complying with the new EU law, a significant minority are refusing to recognise and abide by the directive, a study by the Fair Tax Foundation shows. This minority is largely made up of US based and Swiss based multinational corporations who are refusing to disclose the legally required information on where they are booking profits. The US’s most powerful business groups recently asked the Trump administration to force Australia to back down on its local lifting of the global gag order and make sure that US multinational corporations operating in Australia do not have to apply with the Australian law.
6. The Compromiso de Sevilla UN outcome document from the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development commits: “We will work to strengthen country-by-country reporting of multinational enterprises, when applicable, including further evaluating the creation of a central public database for country-by-country reports.” Read the full document here.
7. The work long underway by the majority of countries to replace the OECD’s failed leadership on global tax rules with transparent, democratic and inclusive decision-making at the UN is now in the deep stages of negotiations, with a convention due in 2027. More information on the UN tax convention and the negotiations underway is available here.
8. In a presidential memorandum signed on the first day of Trump’s second term, the new Trump administration declared that the US no longer recognises the tax sovereignty of other countries over businesses operating within their borders, specifically over US multinational corporations operating within their borders. The memorandum reverts the US’s standing on international tax to a pre-League of Nations, might-is-right standing where a corporation operating globally can only be taxed by the country from which it comes. The memorandum ordered the US treasury to prepare a list of economic measures that can be used to enforce the new standing. More analysis on this is available here.
9. The status of the OECD as a global rule maker effectively collapsed this year when countries officially began work on establishing a UN tax convention that would move decision-making on global tax rules away from the OECD and to the UN, and when at the same time the new Trump administration blew up the OECD negotiation process by reneging on controversial OECD tax reforms that had been forced through by the US to begin with, and then threatened economic repercussions against any country that implements the US-designed reforms. The majority of countries decided to move beyond the OECD, a US-dominated club of countries club that served for decades as the world’s de facto global rule maker, following a decade-long failure by the OECD to reform is astronomically costly tax rules. There is wide consensus on the shortcomings of the OECD’s leadership and failures of its proposed reforms: The UN Secretary-General’s 2023 report, requested by the UN General Assembly, concludes on the OECD’s decision making processes that “they do not satisfy the main elements for fully inclusive and more effective international tax cooperation”. The EU parliament, in a resolutionin 2023 backing a legally-binding UN tax convention, reaffirmed global criticism that the OECD has not meaningfully included non-members in decision-making. For more account of more criticisms, see chapter three of the joint-briefing Litany of failure: the OECD’s stewardship of international taxation.
10. See note 7 for more information on the Trump administration un-recognising and challenging of the tax sovereignty of other nations, particularly over US multinational corporations. It is worth noting that while the new Trump administration is attempting to bar other countries from taxing UN multinational corporations, the previous Trump administration severely weakened the US’s own capacity to tax US multinational corporations, as Chapter 1 of the State of Justice 2025 report details. The chapter finds that following Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the corporate tax rates that US multinational corporations pay in practice in the US – ie, their “effective corporate tax rates” – plummeted from 32.9% in 2016 to 20.8% in 2024. Effective corporate tax rates have declined even more for US tech companies, from 32.8% in 2016 – then on par with other US companies – to just 10.8% in 2024. Having already hollowed out the US government’s ability to tax US multinational corporations in his first term, Trump’s attacks on the ability of other countries to tax US multinational corporations risks potentially leading to a worldwide collapse of tax sovereignty over US multinational corporations. Given the ease with which multinational corporations can move their headquarters to the US, it’s not impossible for such a collapse of tax sovereignty to extend to far more if not most multinational corporations. This scenario can already be seen beginning to take early shape in the G7’s recent announcement of its willingness to exempt US multinational corporations from plans for a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15%. The exemption would make the US the only government with the right to make sure US multinational corporations – and any multinational corporation that relocates its headquarters to the US – pay a corporate tax rate of at least 15%, which the US is currently failing to do on US tech companies in the aftermath of Trump’s tax cuts.
11. The Terms of Reference of the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation adopted in 2024 establishes as a commitment (article 10a) to “Fair allocation of taxing rights, including equitable taxation of multinational enterprises”.
12. See note 1 for more information on public country by country reporting. Over 120 jurisdictions are currently collecting the reports, but only 36 have some partial form of public country by country reporting, according to a new update published today to Tax Justice Network’s online Policy Tracker alongside the NGO’s research report. Because the reports collected by governments track the global movements of multinational corporation’s profits, the reports collected in one country, especially if that country serves as a popular destination for multinational corporations’ headquarter offices, often expose profit shifting and corporate tax abuse suffered by many other countries too. For this reason, campaigners have called and continue to call on Australia and EU to expand their narrow lifting of the global gag order. Their local lifting of the global gag order allows multinational corporations to not have to disclose where they book their profits outside Australia, or outside the EU, and outside a handful of “noncooperative” jurisdictions. Australia and the EU must require multinational corporations to detail where their profits are booked outside the EU and Australia as well to deliver the global transparency needed to curb global tax abuse, as initial designs and talks of public country by country reporting intended before corporate lobbying limited the measures.
13. Arguably, the most defining and consequential feature of the 100-year-long consensus established in the 1920’s by the League of Nations is the “arms-length-principle”, which has served for a century as the basis on which multinational corporations are taxed. The principle treats the individual parts of a multinational corporation – its subsidiaries, headquarter, holding companies, etc – as separate businesses and taxes them separately. Each country taxes the parts located within its borders. This is the key principle that multinational corporations exploit when they shift profits out of one part of the corporation in one country and to another part in a corporate tax haven in order to underpay tax. We refer to this approach to tax more descriptively as “pay where you say” because it taxes multinational corporations based on where they declare their profits on paper – which can often be in a corporate tax haven where the only presence the corporation has is a mailbox it rents. The alternative to this approach is “unitary taxation with formulary apportionment”. This approach treats all the parts of multinational corporation as one entity, and requires the corporation to be taxed on the profit it makes as whole. Each country in which the multinational corporation operates – where it employs workers, makes goods and services and sells them – taxes a share of the profits that is proportional to share the of the multinational corporation’s operation that takes place within its borders. We refer to this approach as “pay where you play”. By requiring a multinational corporation’s profits to be proportionally taxed across the countries where it genuinely does real business, where each country can tax its allotted share of tax as it sees fit, unitary tax makes corporate tax havens redundant. A corporate tax haven may still choose to not tax a multinational corporations, but since the corporation don’t do real business in the tax haven and only rents a mailbox there, the share of profit the tax haven can tax will be proportionally minimal to non-existent. The OECD’s failed two-pillar proposals sought to narrowly implement unitary tax on a very few multinational corporations, but with deeply biased rules for how proportionality would be allotted that benefitted the richest countries and European tax havens. With the collapse of the 100-year-old consensus (see note 8) which the OECD preserved, the future of the “arms-length-principle” also seems uncertain with two competing visions seeking to replace it. On the one side, the Trump administration is seeking to enforce an “on-off” version of the principle in a way that most eliminates tax obligations: simultaneously seeing the parts of a multinational corporation in others country as not separate from the corporation’s US-based headquarters, and so cannot be taxed by other countries, while also seeing those parts as separate from the US-based headquarters for the purpose of paying tax in the US, and so cannot be taxed by the US either. On the other side, the UN has committed to a “fair allocation of taxing rights” (see note 10) which is broadly understood to be best achieved by replacing the arms-length principle (pay where you say) with unitary tax (pay where you play) – and so would dismantle and fix the most harmful legacies of the 100-year-long consensus. .
14. Every year, an estimated 17 million more people could benefit from clean water and 34 million from basic sanitation, if revenue losses due to global tax abuse were reversed. These are fundamental human rights and are essential for survival. Over a ten-year period, these gains would be associated with the prevention of 600,000 child deaths and 73,000 maternal deaths. Read more about the GRADE analysis conducted by the University of St Andrews, University of Leicester and the Tax Justice Network.
15. Between 1503 and 1660, 16 million kilograms of silver and 185,000 kilograms of gold were shipped to Europe from the Americas (see page 64 in Jason Hickle’s The Divide; Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America). The value of that amount of silver in today’s prices would be US$21,670,133,333 and the gold would be US$20,740,827,917, making for a total sum of US$42,410,961,250. A total of $495 billion corporate tax was lost from 2016 to 2021 to US multinational corporations alone. Dividing this loss by 6 years results in an average annual corporate tax loss of US$82.5 billion, which is 1.95 times more than the combined $42 billion value of the amount of gold and silver shipped out of the Americas in today’s prices.