PARIS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and his new U.S. counterpart Janet Yellen agreed to seek an intercontinental agreement on new guidelines for taxing multinational corporations, the U.S. Treasury and French finance ministry said immediately after the two spoke on Thursday.
Paris and Washington clashed in the course of the Trump administration more than France’s tax on electronic company firms and above reluctance from Yellen’s predecessor Steven Mnuchin to move ahead on talks to overhaul the guidelines for taxing cross-border commerce.
“The Secretary committed to re-have interaction actively in the ongoing OECD conversations on worldwide taxation to forge a well timed intercontinental accord,” the U.S. Treasury mentioned in a assertion issued right after the initially simply call in between Yellen and Le Maire considering the fact that she took office environment on Tuesday.
France’s Finance Ministry stated the two “agreed on the will need to come across multilateral answers to several of the troubles experiencing the global financial system, like addressing the tax worries of successfully and equitably taxing the revenue of multinational companies.”
The similar language has appeared in Treasury statements issued after Yellen’s phone calls with British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak and German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz. In all 3 phone calls, Yellen emphasized cooperation in “ending the pandemic, supporting a robust global financial restoration, fighting income inequality and forcefully addressing the threat of climate modify,” the Treasury stated.
Approximately 140 international locations have agreed to rewrite, by mid 2021, the guidelines about how companies are taxed exterior their household international locations to choose into account the rise of significant digital firms like Google, Amazon, and Fb.
Le Maire and Yellen also spoke about the want to lessen trade tensions involving Europe and the United States, which flared throughout the Trump administration.
The French minister in individual raised the subject of U.S. trade sanctions on French wine growers that the Trump administration experienced place in place over a prolonged-operating plane subsidies dispute.
Reporting by Leigh Thomas in Paris and David Lawder in Washington Enhancing by Bernadette Baum and Sonya Hepinstall