Pastries and Persuasion: How a Global Tax Deal Got Done
The New York Times
Over Zoom calls from basements and a breakfast in Brussels, faltering negotiations to remake the world’s tax architecture were revived.
WASHINGTON — Over a two-hour breakfast of tea and pastries at the Hotel Amigo in Brussels in July, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen tried to persuade Paschal Donohoe, the Irish finance minister, to abandon Ireland’s rock bottom corporate tax rate and join the global deal the Biden administration was racing to clinch.
The closing pitch was simple: Ireland cannot go back in time. The days of American companies moving their headquarters to Ireland for tax purposes were largely over, and more than 100 countries had already agreed in principle to join the agreement.
That meeting kicked off a three-month push to hash out the most sweeping changes to the international tax system in a century, which culminated in an agreement that President Biden and other leaders of the Group of 20 nations are expected to complete this week in Rome. The deal has become crucial to Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda, with the White House and Democrats in Congress now relying on revenue from a new 15 percent global minimum tax and other changes to help pay for the expansive spending package still being negotiated.
