PAPER

Africa and the Global Minimum Tax Debate

SUMMARY

While a global minimum tax is expected to establish a baseline level of revenue from profitable multinationals, such reform is only just the beginning. This becomes particularly compelling when the increasingly dominant role of technology and superstar firms like Facebook, Amazon, and Google in the global economy is considered. A global minimum tax is one of the 14 recommendations that came out of the February 2021 United Nations High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity – aimed at reforming, redesigning, and revitalizing the global architecture to effectively foster financial integrity for sustainable development.  Multilateralism and shared responsibility are needed to address the issue of revenue losses to tax havens and secrecy-based jurisdictions. To enable Africa reap more proportionate benefits from crossborder trade and investment transactions, policy innovation in the tax domain is in order.