Despite the agreements it has promoted in recent years, the OECD has “failed” to proceed with effective reform of the tax system to make it fairer on an international scale, the British non-governmental organization Tax Justice Network (TJN) judges in a report it publishes today.

“The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the club of rich countries, has been setting international tax rules since the 1960s. In the last decade, it has tried to implement significant reforms,” ​​TJN acknowledges.

“But the OECD failed”, says the NGO, specialized in the fight against “tax injustices” on a global scale.

“It does not include non-members [σ.σ. του ΟΟΣΑ] in its decisions (…) and does not promote effective measures to curb abuses”, especially by multinational companies, he explains.

Despite the lower tax scale for companies, the level of which was set at 15% after years of negotiations under the auspices of the OECD, “multinational companies transfer profits worth 1.1 trillion every year. dollars (993 billion euros) in tax havens”, the text underlines.

These transfers mean lost revenue for the governments of countries around the world amounting to $301 billion (nearly €272 billion) annually” from direct taxation, the NGO estimates.

As for indirect taxes, “IMF researchers [σ.σ. του Διεθνούς Νομισματικού Ταμείου] they estimate (…) that they are three times more than the evaded direct taxes”, he adds, without giving a specific amount.

As for individuals, “the world is losing $171 billion (€154 billion) to offshore tax evasion,” according to TJN.

This $472 billion, the amount of tax evasion, is up $45 billion (€40.6 billion) from the NGO’s previous estimate of $427 billion in 2020, 245 due to non-payment of taxes by businesses, 182 by individuals.

The report is being released about ten days after the announcement by the OECD that a draft “historic” agreement of 138 countries was drawn up for a better distribution of tax revenues from the profits of multinationals.

In October 2021, nations around the world agreed to set the minimum tax rate at 15 percent, which is supposed to limit international tax competition and secure an additional $220 billion (€198.6 billion) in tax revenue each year, according to the OECD.

Because of the limits of the reforms promoted, TJN is calling on political decision-makers to create a UN “tax body”, tasking it, rather than the OECD, to set the rules to end tax “abuses”.

The NGO is also calling for “automatic exchange” of tax information between states to be agreed and for “transparency” regarding ownership status to end “anonymous audit of companies and other legal vehicles”.

“We sometimes forget the vital role that taxation plays in our societies”, but it is “the only sustainable source of revenue for independent and sovereign states” and “a key tool in the fight against inequalities”, emphasizes the president of TJN, Irene Owonji-Odida, a lawyer from Uganda.