By TIOL News Service

BRISBANE, NOV 16, 2014: IN their Brisbane Communique the global leaders attending the G-20 Summit have said that they are taking actions to ensure the fairness of the international tax system and to secure countries’ revenue bases. Profits should be taxed where economic activities deriving the profits are performed and where value is created.

The Brisbane Summit hailed the significant progress on the G20/OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action Plan to modernise international tax rules. "We are committed to finalising this work in 2015, including transparency of taxpayer-specific rulings found to constitute harmful tax practices. We welcome progress being made on taxation of patent boxes. To prevent cross-border tax evasion, we endorse the global Common Reporting Standard for the automatic exchange of tax information (AEOI) on a reciprocal basis. We will begin to exchange information automatically with each other and with other countries by 2017 or end-2018, subject to completing necessary legislative procedures."

The G20 also welcomed financial centres’ commitments to do the same and call on all to join us. It also welcomed deeper engagement of developing countries in the BEPS project to address their concerns and promised to work with them to build their tax administration capacity and implement AEOI. It also expressed satisfaction on further collaboration by their tax authorities on cross-border compliance activities.

On the issue of growth, it stated that their goal is to life the G20’s GDP by at least an additional two per cent by 2018. Analysis by the IMF-OECD indicated that their commitments, if fully implemented, will deliver 2.1 per cent. This will add more than US trillion to the global economy and create millions of jobs. The measures to lift investment, increase trade and competition, and boost employment, along with our macroeconomic policies, will support development and inclusive growth, and help to reduce inequality and poverty.

Presenting India's perspective the Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, extended his support to all the initiatives of G-20 that facilitates automatic exchange of information and also ultimately enables a nation to recover its lost wealth. Therefore, he called for effective mechansim for repatriation of unaccounted money.