French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire talks to the press after the meeting of EU ministers during the ECOFIN Economic and Financial Council at the European Council building in Brussels, on May 24, 2022.Olivier Matthys/The Associated Press
A global digital tax deal might not be ready until the end 2023 or early 2024, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Tuesday, flagging a big delay to the reform’s implementation.
The deal, which officials had hoped to sign off on at the middle of this year, aims to reallocate rights to tax big digital groups such as Apple and Google to the countries where the end clients are located.
It is the first of two pillars of a major overhaul of the rules of cross-border taxation which also include plans for a global minimum corporate tax of 15% on big multinationals.
“As far as Pillar I is concerned - digital taxation - we won’t spare our efforts to convince the international community and the members of the OECD to do their best efforts to have a consensus in the coming months,” Le Maire said after chairing a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels.
“It might be the end of 2023, it might be the beginning of 2024, the key point is to have a total overhaul of the international taxation system,” Le Maire added.
Nearly 140 countries agreed last October to rewrite the rules of international taxation for the first time in a generation, setting a 2023 deadline for implementation.
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