Tax incentives threatened as global deal nears

Experts at the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF) acknowledge how unbalanced the entire situation appears. For a continent that has perpetually been an after-thought to the initiatives from global powers, the latest initiatives around global taxation, naturally trigger familiar feelings of discomfort.

In a nutshell, after years of negotiations to try to close loopholes, an agreement has been reached to impose a global minimum tax on multinational entities, an initiative referred to as the GloBE rules. Stemming out of discussions within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the initiative means that large multi-national entities will be required to pay at least a 15% effective rate on all of their global profits. The OECD is an inter-governmental economic policy bloc formed by and comprising of high-income economies, located mainly in the West.