At the annual meeting of the IMF held in Washington from Friday 13 to Sunday 15 October, France and the United States managed to move their positions close together on fighting money laundering, but their views continue to diverge on the taxation of the Internet giants.
The solution called for by France to ensure that Internet giants pay tax where value is created - a turnover tax - did not convince the American Secretary to the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, who described the tax as “illogical” and not going in the right direction. He stressed the fact that American companies were taxed throughout the world and in different ways.
However, Mnuchin said that he shared the ultimate objective. “What we don't want is for the international companies to be going into tax havens to avoid taxes”, he said.
For his part, Bruno Le Maire, the French Minister, said that he was pleased with progress made in Washington and explained that France and the US had agreed to set up a joint working group on the dossier. He acknowledged that his idea was not an “ideal proposal, but one that can be implemented very quickly”.
The idea of a turnover tax aims to find a stop-gap solution whilst a long-term solution to be implemented globally can be negotiated at international level. According to our information, the American co-rapporteur asked for the OECD interim report to be published not in December, but in February, ahead of a presentation at the G20 on 8 April. For its part, the Commission is reluctant to steal a march on the OECD by presenting its proposal before the aforementioned G20 meeting or just after, to try to save the day, if the OECD's interim conclusions should prove unsatisfactory.
Sanctions for countries reluctant to tackle the financing of terrorism
On Saturday 14 October, the major financial-decision-makers of these economies published a joint press release. First of all, they pledged to coordinate their efforts to further reinforce the tools and resources of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international body for the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism. However, Le Maire and Mnuchin have also agreed to develop a common initiative to reinforce tools to encourage countries not fully and effectively respecting the implementation of FATF standards. This should include a reinforcement of capability and technical assistance as well as counter-measures and sanctions, where appropriate, they state.
At European level, the anti-money laundering directive, which has been amended by the Commission to bolster the tools to tackle the financing of terrorism, is still being hammered out around modified provisions to respond to the Panama Papers scandal. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)