The director of the OECD’s centre for tax policy and administration, Pascal Saint-Amans, has talked of being ‘embarrassed’ over the UK’s diverted profits tax legislation (DPT). In giving evidence on the topic of corporate tax avoidance to the Australian Parliament’s Economics References Committee, Saint-Amans – responding to a senator’s question on what the OECD’s view on the DPT was – said: ‘It is an embarrassed view, I must say. We have sympathy for the need to move and there is an electoral context … where the government, which has been very instrumental in supporting BEPS in raising the profile of this project, wanted to show that it was acting very, very quickly – even before the time line of the BEPS project, which is after a very important electoral date in the UK.
‘On the other hand, unilateral actions are not exactly in the sense of what we are trying to develop, which is, “Let’s wait for a comprehensive package and then countries will decide”. You are sovereign; you will decide what to do. But you will be better informed with better instruments and with a lesser risk of having disruptive actions, which might push other countries … to take unilateral measures, which are not that great when you are negotiating a multilateral package.’
The director of the OECD’s centre for tax policy and administration, Pascal Saint-Amans, has talked of being ‘embarrassed’ over the UK’s diverted profits tax legislation (DPT). In giving evidence on the topic of corporate tax avoidance to the Australian Parliament’s Economics References Committee, Saint-Amans – responding to a senator’s question on what the OECD’s view on the DPT was – said: ‘It is an embarrassed view, I must say. We have sympathy for the need to move and there is an electoral context … where the government, which has been very instrumental in supporting BEPS in raising the profile of this project, wanted to show that it was acting very, very quickly – even before the time line of the BEPS project, which is after a very important electoral date in the UK.
‘On the other hand, unilateral actions are not exactly in the sense of what we are trying to develop, which is, “Let’s wait for a comprehensive package and then countries will decide”. You are sovereign; you will decide what to do. But you will be better informed with better instruments and with a lesser risk of having disruptive actions, which might push other countries … to take unilateral measures, which are not that great when you are negotiating a multilateral package.’
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