G20 leaders recommit to tax cooperation in the context of growth, BEPS, and transparency
The 11th G20 Summit was held in Hangzhou, China on 4-5 September 2016. Under China’s presidency, this year, the G20 committed to the theme and vision “Towards an innovative, invigorated, interconnected, and inclusive world economy”. Prior to this Summit, the Business 20 (B20) submitted the 2016 B20 Policy Recommendations to the Chinese president XI Jinping during the opening of the B20 Summit.
In 2016, the B20’s policy recommendations focused on structural measures to promote robust, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth in the global economy amidst the age of globalisation and regional economic integration. Along this theme, the B20 made a tax policy recommendation to the G20, specifically, using tax as a means to support inclusive growth.
At the conclusion of the G20 Summit, the G20 Leaders’ Communique was endorsed by the G20 leaders, setting out the key consensus and agreed actions from the two-day talks in Hangzhou. In the Communique, the G20 Leaders, among other items, reiterated the importance of international tax cooperation in the context of growth, but also referred back to base erosion profit shifting (BEPS), automatic exchange of financial information, transparency and non-cooperative jurisdictions, as well as capacity building. There was also a reference to China’s establishment of an international tax policy research centre for international tax policy design and research, which is being coordinated by China’s Ministry of Finance.
Since January 2016, PwC China has supported the B20 discussions and drafted the recommendations in our capacity as the “Financing Growth” taskforce Knowledge Partner. This issue of our Tax News Flash summarises the key points from the B20’s tax policy recommendations to the G20 and the G20’s agreed actions going forward.
