<nettime> BEPS Blues

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

Hej Hej,

BEPS stands for 'Base Erosion and Profit Shifting' and is the name of a 
biggie OECD policy framework to address the vexed issue of corporate, 
multinational taxation in the wake of the 2007/8 financial crisis and 
the recurring scandals about tax avoidance by big business, the 'Panama 
Papers' episode being the last.

Every now and then the FT carries a thick advertisement magazine simply 
called 'Tax' which is published by http://www.ey.com/ and aims to 
provide "insights for business leaders" (and this parasite) on matters 
of, well, tax. Its BESP issue provides for fascinating reading, and 
prime teaching material for anyone interested in illustrating the 
concept of complexity = obfuscation. OK, not always, but surely in the 
way big corporate has marshaled its global business arrangements and 
especially its tax (evasion) practices. Presently, they want us to 
believe that the OECD, that is the governments that matter, having 
finally decided 'to do something' - and they are making surprinsingly 
good progress at it - things are going to become even more intractably 
complex. Oh My.

But hey, there's a silver lining & an escape route, and, no price for 
guessing, it's called the Internet.

The OECD is quite upfront about the difficulties ahead in 'making 'm pay 
up'. The very first 'action' (they're 15 of them adressing all sorts of 
issues, e.g. coherence, collaboration, transfer pricing, 'aggressive' 
tax planning, etc) is about the digital economy. It reads, in Ey's 
interpretation:

"The OECD has found it was impossible to ring-fence (the?) digital given 
its integration with the whole economy. Rather than support specific 
measures, the organisation is promoting further work and monitoring to 
react to specific challenges which digital activity can create."

My translation: "The Internet has created a wholly new, massive, opaque 
and impenetrable tax haven, and we can do next to nothing about it."

Welcome (back?) to Cryptonomicon!

Hilsen, p+2D!

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