"Everything will happen very quickly now,"
Scholz, who is running as Social Democrat chancellor candidate
in Germany's elections in September, told Reuters in an
interview.
"The goal is very ambitious: we want to have everything ready
already so that it becomes international practice in 2023," he
added.
Last week, 130 countries, representing more than 90% of global
GDP, backed the biggest changes to cross-border corporate tax in
more than a generation with new rules on where companies are
taxed and a tax rate of at least 15%.
The package goes to G20 finance ministers next to give political
endorsement at a meeting on Friday and Saturday in Venice. Tax
havens, to which some global corporations have moved their
profits, would lose out.
"We are talking about a lot of additional money for Europe and
for Germany," Scholz said. "It's really about billions," he
added, without giving exact figures.
"Then the main thing is to make sure we end the practice of tax
avoidance that has crept in over the last years and decades," he
said. "We will put an end to that. The tax-cutting race will
come to an end."
Nine countries that did not sign the global tax overhaul backed
by 130 others were the low-tax EU members Ireland, Estonia and
Hungary as well as Peru, Barbados, Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Kenya.
"I am convinced that in the end we will manage to get European
countries to all agree on these rules together," Scholz said.
"From my point of view, they would apply in any case."
Scholz described the global minimum tax as a breakthrough and
the biggest reform in decades.
The minimum corporate tax does not require countries to set
their rates at the agreed floor but gives other countries the
right to apply a top-up levy to the minimum on companies' income
coming from a country that has a lower rate.
If a German corporation abroad paid only 2% on its profits, for
example, it could be challenged in the future: "Then we'll just
take the rest," Scholz said.
(Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Maria Sheahan)
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