G20 Foundation Research G20 Russia Summit 2013 | Page 8

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[Evaluation of the G20 Leaders Summit in St Petersburg on September 5-6]
Base erosion, profit shifting and tax avoidance
The issue of tax avoidance by multinational businesses and international finance has
been a top priority at the Leaders’ Summit. In this area, there were possibly achieved
the most far reaching and concrete summit result. 15
As written in #50, “Profits should be taxed where economic activities deriving the
profits are performed and where value is created”. Following this statement, G20
Leaders declared the support of the comprehensive “G20/OECD Action Plan on
Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS)” that defines 15 concrete issues. In addition,
they called for the implementation of automatic exchange of tax information as new
global standard by the end of 2015 and for all countries to participate in this and
other existing multilateral agreements. Further agreements were the continuous
monitoring and comprehensive country ratings with respect to implementation as
well as establishing a roadmap and support for developing countries to meet
emerging standards of automatic exchange of information and build capacities in the
area of tax administration. Furthermore, a relatively tight timeframe for working on
base evasion was implemented, which can be counted as a great success.
Interestingly, this topic has not been pushed or addressed as one of the main goals
of any of the five important G20 Outreach Groups. In contrast, it seems to be one of
the very few topics all G20 country leaders could agree on easily; reasons for this
seem twofold: First, tax evasion is a very popular topic in domestic politics, public
opinion is clearly defined; Second, countries that profit from lax regulations and tax
evasion (so called tax havens) are mostly small and not included in the G20 process,
however their inclusion in agreements remains critical and an important aspect to
be monitored on the agenda.
G20 Agenda / Cooperation with International Institutions – Challenges
Agenda-Setter vs. Forum for “daily politics”: The hottest issues in terms of public
and media attention was certainly not an economic one; large parts of the summit
were dedicated to mostly bilateral discussions about a military intervention in Syria;

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See #50-52 of the Leaders Declaration