It has been billed as a turning point for the planet. Joe Biden is off to Cornwall for a G7 summit where the world's most industrialised nations for the first time will agree on a global corporate tax rate – quite a coup. Ever since the time of the Pharaohs, governments raising revenue has always exclusively been a matter of national sovereignty.
But as we all know, times have changed. The advent of the digital age is accelerating a globalisation that puts vast swathes of our activity in the cloud, far from any tax collector and while an increasingly angry middle class continues to cough up based on what it earns from the sweat of its brow, tax avoidance by big business and the super-rich, most of it perfectly legal, is increasingly stoking that anger.
So is 15 percent on multinational profits enough? Will other major powers agree? And just as the 2008 financial crisis begat Brexit and rising populism the world over, what will our post-pandemic world look like if leaders fail to address the antiquated rules of the game?
Produced by Yann Pusztai, Juliette Laurain and Imen Mellaz.
