Did the European Commission hit on the idea of the century when it proposed that the EU set in place a common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB)? The Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT), whose members include economists Thomas Piketty, Joseph Stiglitz and Gabriel Zucman and MEP Eva Joly (Greens/EFA), published a roadmap on Tuesday 6 February, calling for a similar system at international scale.
ICRICT considers that the OECD's plan to tackle tax optimisation, BEPS, has shown itself to be incapable of ensuring that profits are taxed where the economic activities are carried out.
“Multinationals are groups of entities that are under single management control and have a single set of owners, and should therefore be taxed as unitary firms”, the ICRICT roadmap argues.
“A unitary approach should apportion the multinational's global profits to the different countries through a simple allocation formula, based on objectively verifiable factors”, in other words staff numbers, turnover, resources used, fixed assets, etc. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)