Technical giants have to pay the right part of the tax COVID | to help fight the coronavirus pandemic

The leaders of the richest countries will attend the G7 summit in Cornwall, UK, at the world’s first “melee” meeting since the pandemic began on June 11-13.

There are a number of complex global issues that G7 leaders will discuss at the summit, including how to end the pandemic, kick-start recovery and better prepare for climate change. The pressure is on the UK government, which is organizing not only the G7 but also the UN Climate Change Conference.

The question is on everyone’s mind: who will pay the bill to deal with these global problems?

New ActionAid research shows that G20 countries lose $ 32 billion a year in taxes to only five of the world’s largest technology companies. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Alphabet and Microsoft could only pay one-year tax bills to tech giants by paying two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in full per person on earth.

Of course, this figure only provides a scale of the resources involved in taxing large high-tech companies. In practice, sharing knowledge and technology can accelerate vaccine production to reach as many people as possible.

One way is to temporarily renounce patents for vaccines and other COVID-19 therapies and diagnoses, as advocated by India and South Africa and more than 100 countries at the World Trade Organization. Biden administration recently he renounced patents on vaccines, and we urge the UK government to continue as the G7 host.

But ActionAid’s new report, Mission Recovery: How the Big Tech Tax Bill could launch a fairer economy, provides viable ways for governments to increase tax revenues and fund vaccines, public services and green recovery.

Technology giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Alphabet and Microsoft have widespread market activity around the world and have earned billions during the pandemic. If global corporate tax systems were fair, governments would increase tax revenues and fund better health systems to help end the pandemic and begin recovery.

With U.S. Treasurer Janet Yellen corporate tax comments recently, it is promising to target Silicon Valley technology giants, major polluters, and wealth campaigns that demand a global tax on billions of companies that have grown exponentially in the exponential wealth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another question that goes on in the minds of some people is: How should we determine why corporation tax companies should pay in each country in which they operate? There are many ways to calculate this, but most recommendations recommend looking at factors such as their sales, assets, and the number of employees they have in each country. Unless companies make a transparent report, collecting this data is not easy, but by looking at a proxy indicator we can get a useful estimate: the number of users they have in each country. For example, in the 20 developing countries, there are nearly 1.5 billion users accessing Google, about 900 million people are using Microsoft and more than 750 million users are using Facebook. For these companies, the number of users is a good indicator of their sales and assets. For digital businesses, user data is the most valuable asset, something that can be extracted in many ways and sold forward.

ActionAid is one of the organizations that would require significant corporate tax reform that would ensure that corporate taxes would reflect their true economic presence, and sets a minimum tax rate to help tackle the problem of tax havens. First, we need to know what these companies pay (or don’t pay) in all the countries where they are. Some companies, such as the big EU banks, are already undergoing a “public report for each country”, with companies disclosing key financial and tax data, broken down by countries in which they operate. This requirement should be extended to all large multinational companies. What’s more, we want southern countries around the world to have significant significance when it comes to implementing general tax rules, which is why we support calls for the creation of a UN Tax Commission with the capacity and resources to establish and enforce fair tax rules.

Everyday people have been the worst affected by the pandemic: informal workers with precarious contracts, primary health heroes and key workers – most of whom are women. Taxpayers around the world have reason to be outraged, waking up with the title of those who seem rich every day because the world is hit by an unprecedented health and economic crisis in the world. Wealth of 1 percent rose $ 3.9 trillion since the pandemic began, while the International Labor Organization saw global workers lose $ 3.7 trillion in profits over the same period.

ActionAid’s new research shows that billions may be at stake in the long-term reform of the international tax corporation, enough to transform low-funding health and education systems around the world. And in the absence of a global agreement on taxes, countries can take unilateral measures to tax these companies on their profits or their transactions.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the attitude of the Al Jazeera editorial.