Global Tax Evasion Report 2024

Authors: Annette Alstadsæter, Sarah Godar, Panayiotis Nicolaides, and Gabriel Zucman

Over the last 10 years, governments have launched major initiatives to reduce international tax evasion. Yet despite the importance of these developments, little is known about the effects of these new policies. Is global tax evasion falling or rising? Are new issues emerging, and if so, what are they? This report addresses these questions thanks to an unprecedented international research collaboration building on the work of more than 100 researchers globally.


From the Executive Summary:


"This report makes six recommendations to address the issues identified above. The common
theme of these recommendations is that they focus on reducing the tax deficit of multinational
companies and wealthy individuals. The tax deficits are the difference between what these actors
pay in taxes today and what they would pay if minimum taxes were well enforced. Reducing the
tax deficits of multinationals and wealthy individuals can not only generate large amounts of
government revenue, but also contribute to increasing the social sustainability of globalization.

Our proposals are the following:

1. Reform the international agreement on minimum corporate taxation to implement a rate
of 25% and remove the loophole in it that foster tax competition.

2. Introduce a new global minimum tax for the world’s billionaires equal to 2% of their
wealth.

3. Institute mechanisms to tax wealthy people who have been long-term residents in a
country and choose to move to a low-tax country.

4. Implement unilateral measures to collect some of the tax deficits of multinational
companies and billionaires in case global agreements on these issues fail.

5. Move towards the creation of a Global Asset Registry to better fight tax evasion.

6. Strengthen the application of economic substance and anti-abuse rules."


https://www.taxobservatory.eu//www-site/uploads/2023/10/global_tax_evasion_report_24.pdf

'fees for private education be subject to VAT'

Interestingly this fiscal option is currently considered in Albania.

I see it as a way of 'earmarking revenues' which in the past was a no-no option. Yet, in these times of current and future increasing public expenditures, revenue earmarking may be palatable as part of a fiscal contract with citizens: 'we tax you more in exchange of better services'. That seems one of the messages coming from the recent ODI conference.
On this subject go and check Marc Robinson's speech at 
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marc-robinson-4012081b_do-we-need-a-new-public-finance-agenda-for-activity-7115340823218507776-Ka8d?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
   
The issue for me is the credibility of a fiscal contract, which implies long term commitments, in a such divisive and unstable political environment
 

Very listenable audio of a book on Adam Smith the "father" of economics by Jesse Norman.
For those not too interested in the history or do not have the time, Episode 5 on how Adam Smith's ideas should inform our thinking today may be of interest.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qdlx/episodes/player

Interesting commentary from the Fiscal Council which is an independent statutory body with a mandate to:
•   Assess the Government’s fiscal stance
•   Assess and endorse its official economic forecasts
•   Assess its budgetary forecasts
•   Monitor fiscal rules

https://www.fiscalcouncil.ie/pre-budget-2024-statement/
Key Messages
“The Government now plans to repeatedly breach the National Spending Rule every year out to 2026. The Government’s intention is to go beyond plans set out in April, repeatedly breach the National Spending Rule every year out to 2026. The Rule sets a 5% limit for core spending increases net of new tax measures — a speed broadly matching trend growth that would help stabilise the economy and avoid fuelling price and wage pressures. Core net spending is now expected to be €4 billion higher by 2026 compared to previous plans.
These breaches are a serious cause for concern.
1) They risk repeating Ireland’s past mistakes, with employment already high and windfalls boosting the Exchequer. This would represent a continuation of procyclical fiscal policy.
2) The stance adopted undermines the National Spending Rule at a time when EU fiscal rules are not binding and likely to be distorted by GDP if and when new proposals are enacted.
3) The manner in which plans were revised weakens the credibility of Government projections, lacking transparency and not factoring in overruns and costs related to population ageing and the climate transition.
The Council recognises pressures for additional spending, but these pressures should be funded sustainably. Pressures in health, housing, infrastructure and climate-related areas are likely to need ongoing multi-year funding. If the Government wishes to ramp up spending across all these areas, it should ensure that the outlays can be maintained on an ongoing basis and not just based on receipts expected to prove temporary.
Looking to Budget 2024, the Council assesses that:
• The Government should adjust its plans to stick to its National Spending Rule. This would ensure more credible and sustainable fiscal plans. It could be achieved by introducing offsetting tax increases or spending adjustments elsewhere. To this end, there is a role for developing more comprehensive reviews of existing programmes.
• There is little to no justification for further temporary non-core measures in Budget 2024. Energy prices are falling and temporary measures risk adding to price pressures. Additional unfunded measures, given the existing pressures and low unemployment, would represent a further shift toward a more procyclical fiscal policy.
• The Government needs to improve its long-term planning. The Government’s fiscal plans only go to 2026, right before new estimates from the Council suggest climate costs will mount (Casey and Carroll, 2023). Ageing pressures will also begin to deepen towards the end of this decade.
• The Council welcomes proposals for a new Savings Vehicle — temptations to spend more resources immediately should be resisted, without offsetting measures elsewhere. There are substantial pressures for additional spending and there is a good case to be made for additional public investment. However, the State already has ways to achieve that. The National Spending Rule allows additional spending provided this is offset elsewhere, while the National Development Plan provides a framework to plan longer term capital needs. The rationale for an investment fund is weak. It risks simply being used as a means of ramping up capital spending in the short term even more than currently planned, and at a time when getting value for money is challenging.
• The Government should reinforce its National Spending Rule as a “first line of defence”. The Government’s National Spending Rule could continue to prove a useful tool to ensure the public finances are managed sustainably. But it needs to be reinforced and adhered to.”

See also
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3gw0888ew5o
which contains:
"Irish Finance Minister Michael McGrath rejected the IFAC criticism, saying inflation meant the government had to adapt its policy, which included breaching the spending rule.
He added that "on balance" it was the right thing to do."

A comprehensive review of the taxation system in the UK has just been published by Institute of Fiscal Studies.
Tax and public finances: the fundamentals by Isaac Delestre and Helen Miller 

Summary at https://ifs.org.uk/publications/tax-and-public-finances-fundamentals

This report highlights 10 key facts about UK tax and public finance policy that will underpin the choices faced by governments in coming decades.  It supports and expands the argument made in the PFMBoard above. 

To quote the report: “Rather, it is a question of how those taxes are designed. The 10 key facts that we have highlighted (see the ‘Fundamental facts’ box) reflect that almost all taxes have major design flaws and significant scope for improvement. If the opportunity is taken, those improvements could go a long way to reducing the economic pain that a higher overall level of tax would entail. While there are specific choices and challenges for each tax, the problems caused by poor tax design fall into three broad types.

First, various taxes distort the choices of people and firms in ways that are unjustified (in the sense that the distortions are not necessary to achieve government aims, such as redistribution). For example: high marginal tax rates caused by ‘humps’ in income tax reduce work incentives (by more than is necessary to achieve redistribution); preferential tax rates on business incomes discourage employment (relative to self-employment); large-scale carve-outs within VAT create heavy compliance burdens; corporation tax both discourages some profitable investments and subsidises some unprofitable ones; and stamp duty prevents some people from moving house to, for example, take a better job. Such distortions can mean that less work is done, investment is lower and/or resources are not being allocated to their most efficient uses. Ultimately, inefficient tax design is an unnecessary drag on productivity.

Second, many parts of the tax system are unfair. This is not a statement about vertical redistribution, about which there is reasonable disagreement. Parts of the tax system currently treat very similar people in very different ways that are hard to justify. Two people living in houses that are worth the same amount today can face very different council tax bills if their houses happen to have been worth different amounts in 1991 (the year on which council tax valuations in England and Scotland are based). And two people earning the same income by doing the same work can face very different tax bills if one is an employee and the other is self-employed. Taxes are currently also reinforcing inequalities arising from the fact that different generations have experienced very different economic conditions. Notably, large capital gains on main homes – many of them the result of luck – have been central to a growing intergenerational divide in wealth and are completely untaxed.

Third, some parts of the tax system are not well designed to achieve policy aims. Taxes are, of course, not only used to raise revenue or (alongside the benefit system) to redistribute income. Governments have also long used tax with the explicit aim of changing behaviour. In fact, in recent decades, governments have been introducing new ways to do this. Most notably, there are now various parts of the tax system, including a large number of environmental levies, that are aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The tax system should play a key role in helping the UK transition to net zero. However, the combined effect of the various government policies is an uneven set of incentives that will make achieving net zero more costly than it needs to be.

There is nothing inevitable about the tax system we currently have or the problems it creates. It can be challenging to design taxes and, in some cases, there are trade-offs between different goals. But much is known about how to reform taxes in ways that would make the system more effective, efficient and equitable.

The main challenges are likely to be political. Many of the needed reforms would be large. There would be losers, as well as winners. The potential losers are often a more concentrated and better-organised group than those who are losing out from the current system. In addition, there is often a public misunderstanding about why the tax system is the way it is and which features are justified. For example, over 80% of the UK’s workforce are employees. They lose out from a system that gives tax breaks to the self-employed. If taxes were the same for both groups, overall spending could be higher or taxes on employment lower. Despite this, most employees do not think of themselves as losers from this system. In addition, there is widespread belief that lower tax rates on the self-employed are justified by lower government benefits for that group – this is not the case. Philip Hammond, when Chancellor, tried to implement a small increase to National Insurance contributions of the self-employed in Budget 2017; he U-turned after fierce opposition.

Despite the political difficulties of reforming taxes, governments do face a choice; not seeking to address the problems with the design of the tax system is a choice to live with those problems.
Governments should take this choice seriously. The design of the tax system matters hugely. Reforms in the areas we highlight would be worthwhile even if taxes were being cut overall. But the shape of the tax system matters even more when spending demands are placing upward pressure on the overall level of tax.
There are no silver bullets here. But better-designed taxes could bring real benefits, including by supporting higher economic growth and facilitating the move to net zero. Tax could and should be part of the solution to future challenges rather than part of the problem.”

Full report can be downloaded from
Tax and public finances: the fundamentals (ifs.org.uk)
https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-08/IFS-Report-R270-Tax-and-public-finances-the-fundamentals_final.pdf