The American Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, spoke out Thursday against international negotiations on global taxation of the richest, a project defended by Brazil during its presidency of the G20 and supported by France.
“I am not in favor of international negotiations that would involve all countries agreeing to do this and redistribute revenue between countries, possibly on the basis of climate and climate damage,” she said. declared on the sidelines of the G7 Finances in Stresa in northern Italy.
“It is clear that President Biden and I are committed to tax progressivity. We believe that the tax burden on high incomes and businesses is too low,” she told the press.
The Biden administration has therefore proposed for the 2025 budget a minimum tax of 25% for the “richest 0.01%, those whose fortune is greater than $100 million”.
“So it’s not that I have any objection to imposing a reasonable level of taxation and certainly a minimum level of taxation on very high income people in the United States,” she continued.
According to her, the American government recognizes “that low-income countries and emerging countries need financial support”.
Ms. Yellen estimated that “Brazil, which leads the G20, is right to be concerned about the adequacy of resource flows to support the development” of these countries and “the climate”.
“But I am not in favor” of resolving the problem of resource flows “as part of an international tax negotiation,” she explained.
The Brazilian government was inspired by the work carried out by French economist Gabriel Zucman on the taxation of the richest.
According to the latter, if the planet’s 3,000 billionaires paid at least the equivalent of 2% of their fortune in income taxes, this global tax could bring in an additional $250 billion.
For the French Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, the minimum taxation project for the largest fortunes is among the priorities of the G7 in Stresa.
“We want to continue to carry this idea of a third pillar on international taxation relating to the most fortunate, in order to guarantee the fairness of international taxation,” he declared to the press on Wednesday.
Nearly 140 states agreed at the end of 2021 on minimum taxation of multinationals under the aegis of the OECD, consisting of two pillars, the first aiming for a better distribution of taxation for digital giants and the second a minimum taxation at 15% on companies.
The second pillar was put in place on January 1 in many states, including the European Union, but an agreement on pillar 1 is still struggling to be endorsed by all the countries.