Global Economic and Development Policies

Tax Cooperation Policy Brief 28, 20 January 2023

Climate Finance Withholding Mechanism: Exploring a potential solution for climate finance needs of the developing countries

By Radhakishan Rawal

The developed countries’ commitment to provide climate finance to the developing countries has remained unfulfilled. The Climate Finance Withholding Mechanism (CFWM) is a potential solution for addressing climate finance needs of the developing countries. The CFWM adopts the well settled “withholding mechanism” under the tax laws to provide a steady flow of funds to the developing countries.

Multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) tax residents of developed countries earn income from the developing countries and pay tax on such income in the developed countries. The CFWM requires retention in the developing country, of the amount of tax so payable by the MNE, towards climate finance commitments of the developed countries. The CFWM does not result in additional tax outflow for the MNEs and also does not adversely impact taxing rights of the developed countries. The CFWM results in application of tax revenue of the developed countries towards their climate finance commitments. The CFWM does not address all the issues related to the climate finance problem but only attempts to speed up the flow of funds to the developing countries from where the relevant income originates.

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Tax Cooperation Policy Brief 27, 21 December 2022

Taxing Big Tech: Policy Options for Developing Countries

By Abdul Muheet Chowdhary and Sébastien Babou Diasso

Even as the COVID-19 crisis wreaked havoc on the global economy, it gave rise to a small set of winners, namely Big Tech. The increasing prevalence of remote work and an acceleration of the digitalization of the economy allowed Big Tech companies to raise enormous revenues during the pandemic, which in some cases dwarfed the gross domestic product (GDP) of several countries. This policy brief explores the rising untaxed profits of Big Tech in particular, and the digitalized economy in general, and explains why the existing rules are insufficient. It also critically examines the solution that has been devised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of developed countries. Finally, it outlines alternative policy options that are more suitable for developing countries to tax the profits of Big Tech.

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Research Paper 172, 1 December 2022

 Illicit Financial Flows and Stolen Asset Recovery: The Global North Must Act

by Abdul Muheet Chowdhary and Sebastien Babou Diasso

Domestic resource mobilization is essential for developing countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by the deadline of 2030. Concomitantly, Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs), which also lead to asset theft, are major means through which these countries are losing resources. This research paper analyzes the World Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery (STAR) database and shows that countries from where assets have been stolen are mostly developing countries, and countries where the stolen assets have been hidden are developed countries. The paper also shows that regarding the pending or ongoing asset recovery cases, there is a clear pattern where the majority of countries waiting to have their assets returned are developing countries, and those who must return them are developed countries. There is an unexplained and unjustified delay by developed countries in the process of returning the frozen assets to developing countries which needs to be addressed as soon as possible. There is also an evaluation of international legal reforms which can be implemented to accelerate the asset recovery process. However, all these will need the full commitment of Global North countries where most of the stolen assets are hidden and which bear the brunt of responsibility for returning them to the developing countries.

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Call to Action: “Now or Never” by H.E. Thabo Mbeki, 21 November 2022

Combating Illicit Financial Flows : “Now or Never”

Statement of H.E. Thabo Mbeki, Chairperson of the African Union High Level Panel on IFFs

“I fully support the creation of a globally inclusive, intergovernmental process at the UN. I urged all international organisations and Member States to resist attempts to block this important step forward, and thus call into question our global commitment to fighting illicit financial flows and corporate tax abuse in support of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

* H.E. Thabo Mbeki is also the Chair of the Board of the South Centre.

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Second African Fiscal Policy Forum, 1 December 2022

Second African Fiscal Policy Forum (Part one): Curbing Illicit Financial Flows from Africa and Accelerating Asset Recovery for Sustainable Development

Date: Thursday, 1st of December 2022 Time: 03:00 – 06:00 PM (Addis Ababa Time)

The event will be hybrid.

In person: Addis Ababa

Following the outcomes of the First Forum held in December 2021, this Second Series will be held in three iterations. This first part of the Second African Fiscal Policy Forum will bring together key stakeholders to discuss the current global processes towards combatting IFFs, the role of African regional institutions, and the importance of supporting Africa’s Domestic Resource Mobilization efforts.

Organizers: Coalition for Dialogue on Africa, CODESRIA, South Centre, Rosa Luxemburg Siftung

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SouthViews No. 242, 4 November 2022

A Proposal for a New Approach to Restructuring African Eurobonds: The DOVE Fund and Principles

By Daniel Bradlow

This article argues that the current arrangements for restructuring sovereign bonds do not meet Africa’s needs. African states and their supporters should create a DOVE (Debts of Vulnerable Economies) Fund that can purchase the bonds of African sovereign debtors in distress and commit to restructure them in accordance with the DOVE Fund Principles. This Fund can help interrupt inter-creditor dynamics and push the bondholders to be more open to innovative approaches to debt restructuring.  This article, after briefly considering some of the problems with the current process for restructuring sovereign bonds, discusses the DOVE Fund and the DOVE Fund Principles.

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Tax Cooperation Policy Brief 26, 31 October 2022

Revenue Effects of the Global Minimum Corporate Tax Rate for African Economies

By Seydou Coulibaly

This policy brief provides the first piece of empirical evidence on the revenue implications of the recent global minimum tax rate reform agreement for African economies. We implement a regression discontinuity design to evaluate the effect of having an effective corporate tax rate of at least 15% on tax revenue collection for a panel of 28 African economies over the period 2000-2020.

The estimation results indicate that the implementation of the global minimum effective corporate tax rate of 15% proposed under Pillar II of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Two Pillar Solution has a positive but not statistically significant likely impact on corporate tax revenue and total tax revenue at the conventional significance levels. This suggests that the global minimum tax deal is unlikely to increase tax revenue for African economies. These findings exhort the Inclusive Framework and all the stakeholders of the global tax reform negotiations to consider revising the global minimum tax rate rules to ensure that the agreement will effectively benefit African countries through better tax revenue collection.

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SC Statement to the G24, 11 October 2022

Statement by Dr. Carlos Correa, Executive Director of the South Centre, to the Ministers and Governors Meeting of the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four (G24)

October 2022, Washington, D.C.

Amid multiple crises and facing gloomier global economic prospects for 2023, the Ministers and Governors meeting of the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four on International Monetary Affairs and Development (G24) was held on 11 October 2022 during the IMF and World Bank annual meeting.  The South Centre is an observer of the G24. The written statement of Dr. Carlos Correa, the Executive Director of the South Centre, was circulated at the meeting.

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Research Paper 165, 4 October 2022

Evaluating the Impact of Pillars One and Two

By Suranjali Tandon and Chetan Rao

The proposed OECD Pillar One and Two reforms mark a significant shift in the way large multinational enterprises are taxed on their global incomes. However, while considering the reform at the proposed scale tax administrators must be able to compare the revenue gains with alternatives. This paper uses open-source data to provide tentative estimates of the impact of Pillars One and Two. The methodology has been detailed so that administrators can replicate it for comparison. Further, the paper provides an assessment from the perspective of developing countries of some of the key design elements of the proposals so as to understand whether they are administrable and to foresee possible challenges.

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Tax Cooperation Policy Brief 25, 30 September 2022

UN Model Tax Convention: Selective Territoriality – The Specter of Privileged Player in a Rigged Game

By Muhammad Ashfaq Ahmed

This paper lays out the chessboard on which taxes on international incomes from immovables are contested, bargained, and harvested as per pre-determined rules that are starkly tilted in favor of developed countries. This embedded and pronounced bias in the international taxes regime in favor of developed countries makes them a privileged player. The developed countries then make maneuvers to optimize on their economic gains at the expense of developing nations rendering it a rigged game setting. The paper derives its rationale from an exceptionally selective choice of territoriality on incomes from immovables, which was astonishingly not aligned with the expected reverse capital movement, that is, from developing to developed countries. The genesis and evolution of selective territoriality are traced through its various institutional development phases – League of Nations (LN), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and United Nations (UN). An overwhelming international consensus on selective territoriality on incomes from immovables notwithstanding, the UN’s role is brought into spotlight to argue that the developing countries may have suffered massively over the past one hundred years by instinctively believing in the UN Model Tax Convention’s (MTC) efficacy and blindly pursuing Article 6 in their bilateral double taxation conventions (DTCs). The inimical implications of herd-mentality on part of developing countries got galvanized in the particular wake of developed countries employing innovative optimization tools – citizenship/residence by investment programs, tax havenry, manipulable ownership structures, beneficial ownership legislations, and porous exchange of information regime – to maximize on the economic gains. The paper undertakes both normative and structuralist evaluation of selective territoriality to sum up that this is an unjust principle of distribution of fiscal rights at the international level particularly in asymmetric economic relationships, and can hold its ground only until developing countries attain full cognition of the reality and start raising their vocal chords in unison to dismantle it.  

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SC Contribution – Comments on Amount A of Pillar One, 24 August 2022

PROGRESS REPORT ON AMOUNT A OF PILLAR ONE

The BEPS Monitoring Group, 24 August 2022

The BEPS Monitoring Group submitted comments to the Public Consultation on the Progress Report on Amount A of Pillar One released by the OECD in July on behalf of the Inclusive Framework on BEPS. Abdul Muheet Chowdhary, Senior Programme Officer of the South Centre Tax Initiative, was a contributor.

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