The Us Threat To Global Tax Reform: A Proposal For Protecting Multilateralism
PUBLISHED: Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:49:27 GMT
Joseph Stiglitz and Jayati Ghosh - ICRICT
Contributor
The US Threat to Progress on Tax Multilateralism
By the end of 2024, considerable progress had been made towards the construction of a comprehensive multilateral architecture for corporate taxation.
This shift was initiated through intergovernmental negotiation at the OECD, where countries reached a consensus on a global minimum tax (GloBE) in 2021. In 2024, global negotiations started on an inclusive United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (FCITC).
However, in January 2025 the incoming US administration withdrew from the OECD GloBE and abandoned the FCITC negotiations at the UN. Washington has also threatened to impose tariffs and export restrictions on countries whose taxes, legislation and regulations it sees as targeting US tech companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon and Apple. Canada, for instance, introduced a digital service tax in early 2025 but under US threat of tariff retaliation withdrew it in June.
SNIP*
Defending Tax Multilateralism
To accept the US claim to ‘exceptionalism’ on international tax matters (or worse, to allow Washington to write tax rules for the whole world) should clearly be unacceptable in a world of sovereign, independent nations.
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2025/the-us-threat-to-global-tax-reform-a-proposal-for-protecting-multilateralism