As doubts begin to emerge, OECD officials said on Tuesday 2 June that an agreement at the OECD on international tax reform was still possible in 2020, at an online workshop organised by the OECD Centre in Berlin.
A few days ago, Pascal Saint-Amans, Director of the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, himself reported some difficulties in reaching agreement on the OECD proposal for Pillar I (digital taxation) of the reform (see EUROPE 12492/25).
At the event, Martin Kreienbaum, Director General for International Taxation for the German Federal Ministry of Finance and Chair of the OECD’s Committee on Fiscal Affairs, was optimistic and hoped for “an important step forward this year with a view to presenting a proposal to the G20”.
“The crisis has affected our ability to meet physically (...), but we have made technical progress on Pillars I and II”, he said.
Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic has shaken up the OECD calendar, forcing it to postpone to October the plenary meeting of the G20/OECD Inclusive Framework on the BEPS, which was due to take place in July in Berlin and at which an agreement on the main political features of the reform was to be reached (see EUROPE 12479/21).
Germany was also planning to hold a ministerial meeting of all Inclusive Framework countries in early July in Berlin, but this also had to be postponed until October, he said.
Acknowledging the significant impact the pandemic has had, David Bradbury, Head of the Tax Policy and Statistics Division at OECD, also assured that the objective was still “to find a consensus solution by the end of the year”.
Impact assessments also continue to be discussed, he said. The results have not fundamentally changed since the February version (see EUROPE 12425/7). Nevertheless, precaution is called for since the data used do not currently take into account the economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, David Bradbury said.
The analyses are, in any case, subject to change depending on the outcome of the negotiations and the decisions taken by the Inclusive Framework. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)