EU Taxation Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni confirmed in an exchange of views with the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) on Monday 21 June that the European Commission would only present its proposal for a digital levy after the G20 Finance meeting on 9-10 July in Venice.
“We are at the eve of an unprecedented international agreement that is now possible and could set modernised rules for international corporate taxation for the next decades”, said Gentiloni, who already sees the agreement reached at the G7 Finance meeting in early June as “a big step toward a global agreement” (see EUROPE 12735/15).
The Commission is actively engaged in the final multilateral discussions to reach an agreement, at least in principle, at the G20 Finance Summit in early July. And, in order not to interfere with this process, the Commissioner made assurances that the Commission’s proposal on a digital levy (see EUROPE 12637/16) would not be presented until after this meeting.
“We will table this proposal soon after the international agreement at G20 level. Of course, providing that this agreement will come, which is not 100 % clear. You know that the Inclusive Framework will have this probably decisive meeting at the end of June (...) We don’t want to interfere with this process and so the proposal of the Commission will come in July but after these meetings”, he said, without confirming the provisional date of 14 July.
Mr Gentiloni also reassured MEPs that there is no conflict between the future global agreement and the EU’s digital levy (see EUROPE 12685/25). The Commission is still analysing the various options, but will in any case ensure that there is no double taxation through a “a non-discriminatory, broad-based and low rate scheme”, he said.
Asked by MEP Aurore Lalucq (S&D, France) about possible difficulties in transposing these international agreements at EU level due to the unanimity voting rule in the EU Council, the Commissioner said he could not imagine that, in the event of a global agreement, the EU would not be on board.
He said that the issue of resources, which would come from a “global minimum tax on multinationals of at least 15%” was being discussed within the OECD’s Inclusive Framework. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)