Japan Press Weekly

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2020 July 15 - 21 [ECONOMY]

Grassroots movements for tax justice across the world work to put end to major firms’ tax avoidance

After the 2008 financial crisis, in European nations and America, grassroots movements calling for a fair and just tax system became powerful. This was because people experiencing their government’s austerity policies got angry at the extremely low tax rates awarded to major corporations.

John Christensen, the director of the U.K.-based NGO Tax Justice Network, which works on the issue of tax avoidance using tax havens, pointed out in an Akahata interview in November 2016 that the NGO’s insistence on imposing on fair share of taxes on large firms by putting an end to their tax avoidance helped British people to reject pro-austerity arguments.

Starbucks, Amazon, Google, Apple, and other major businesses came under the spotlight with their tax avoidance tactics.

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo in his latest speech commemorating the 98th anniversary of the party’s foundation proposed, “It is necessary to promote tax fairness through such means as tighter taxation on the rich, the introduction of a global currency transaction tax, and international collaboration for higher corporate tax rates.”

People’s movements for tax justice in various countries have contributed to progress in efforts to establish a global framework to tax multinational corporations appropriately. In this regard, an agreement on a global minimum corporate tax rate is near finalization. It aims to cause large businesses to lose their motivation to use overseas tax havens for tax avoidance and at the same time prevent the creation of such places.

Shii’s proposal dovetails with the international trend toward establishing tax justice.

Past related articles:
> International rules on digital tax necessary to have tech giants pay their fair share of tax [February 5, 2020]
> Amazon's tax evasion tactics create unfair competition [September 6, 2018]
> Corporate taxes paid by Amazon Japan were 1/30 of that of Japan's major retailers [May 14, 2018]
> Apple avoids paying 1.2 trillion yen in tax in Japan [December 27, 2017]