Tax reform is essential to stimulating growth in the world’s economies, as multinational firms invest less, causing productivity and wages to stall, argues Liam Byrne, former chief secretary to the Treasury, in ‘A new agenda for inclusive growth’, an article for the OECD Yearbook.
We now have a global marketplace of ‘unprecedented depth and breadth’, says Byrne, but if this is not able to provide the investment needed to produce broad-based economic progress, ‘governments may need to step in’. To this end, Byrne advocates four main changes:
‘radically’ strengthening democratic oversight of tax arrangements, bringing an end to ‘unaccountable’ informal settlements of large corporate tax liabilities;
delivering tax transparency along OECD guidelines, with new trade deals requiring country-by-country reporting of taxes paid;
accelerating the debate about wealth taxes, in light of increases in asset values since 2010; and
transforming the strength of tax authorities, while changing the perception of tax from being just a means of raising revenue, to ‘the price we all should pay for progress’.
Liam Byrne is founder of the UK all-party parliamentary group on inclusive growth.
Tax reform is essential to stimulating growth in the world’s economies, as multinational firms invest less, causing productivity and wages to stall, argues Liam Byrne, former chief secretary to the Treasury, in ‘A new agenda for inclusive growth’, an article for the OECD Yearbook.
We now have a global marketplace of ‘unprecedented depth and breadth’, says Byrne, but if this is not able to provide the investment needed to produce broad-based economic progress, ‘governments may need to step in’. To this end, Byrne advocates four main changes:
‘radically’ strengthening democratic oversight of tax arrangements, bringing an end to ‘unaccountable’ informal settlements of large corporate tax liabilities;
delivering tax transparency along OECD guidelines, with new trade deals requiring country-by-country reporting of taxes paid;
accelerating the debate about wealth taxes, in light of increases in asset values since 2010; and
transforming the strength of tax authorities, while changing the perception of tax from being just a means of raising revenue, to ‘the price we all should pay for progress’.
Liam Byrne is founder of the UK all-party parliamentary group on inclusive growth.
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