That the US (specifically, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen) cheered a few weeks ago when it managed to cobble together an international deal via the OECD – or at least a framework for said deal – to create a new global minimum corporate tax. The deal looks something like this. Countries like Ireland with among the lowest base corporate tax rates have agreed to raise them, and in exchange, the US will allow other countries to take a bigger piece of tax action from American multinationals – particularly tech giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google owner Alphabet.
Unfortunately for Alphabet, which was memorably hit with a trifecta of billion-euro fines a few years back over allegations of monopolistic behavior (note: many of these issues are supposedly being addressed in the tax deal), the global deal won’t free it from having to shell out the massive fines levied by the European Commission’s notorious anti-trust chief Margrethe Vesteger…
