This note argues that the current calls for more inclusive, effective and legitimate multilateral forums for determining international tax norms, principally from the developing world, and epitomized in UN General Assembly Resolution 78/230 on Promotion of inclusive and effective international tax cooperation at the United Nations (Resolution adopted on 22 December 2023, https://financing.desa.un.org/sites/default/ files/2024-01/A.RES_.78.230_English.pdf), represent a challenging but welcome development. This development, as well as multilateral developments at the OECD, will increasingly demand the blending of tax and diplomatic skills in the rooms where tax multilateralism will happen.
The need to consider taxation in its broader context of the need to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) both enriches and complicates such multilateral efforts. An equal partnership of tax and diplomatic skills and understandings will give tax multilateralism the best chances of long-term success, including by understanding and drawing on relevant learnings from the experience of trade, investment, environmental and other linked but differently formed worlds.
The note examines specific features of successful diplomacy and their possible relevance to the multilateral tax endeavour. The countries that best and most creatively manage such efforts will most effectively meet their national needs within a system aspiring for a higher, more collective, and more permanent, improvement in international tax cooperation mechanisms and outcomes. A readjustment period that appears to some to presage uncertainty and instability may, if properly handled, yield just the opposite.
Intertax