Taxing times for big business in fight to avoid tax
BIG business was having none of it. In January 2013, a lobby group which represents the largest corporations in the world wrote a letter to the body that drafts the rules on taxing multinationals. The letter focused on a small change to an obscure document, but one that was significant enough to worry Will Morris, director of global tax policy at American industrial giant General Electric.
The letter, which Morris wrote in his capacity as head of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee lobby, was addressed to Pascal Saint-Amans, head of the centre for tax policy at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of 34 mainly rich economies, including the US. It expressed concern about the proposed language in an updated tax convention. Morris wrote — 13 times in all — that his group was “concerned” about the proposal, but had been ignored. Submissions on the OECD’s website show that lobbyists, especially those representing tech firms, had been voicing such fears for more than a year.
