Avocado Roundup: Malaysia Eyes 2025 Launch for Global Minimum Tax

Avocado Roundup is a quick review of top tax, legal, and climate news stories. It’s written by humans.

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• Malaysia will implement the 15% global minimum tax in 2025, according to reports that followed the government’s 2024 budget presentation Friday. Prime Minister Anwar bin Ibrahim said the government took industry feedback into account in its decision on the tax, reports said. (New Straits Times) (The Star) (The Edge Malaysia)

• Malaysian business leaders and other observers have expressed worries that implementing the tax and other Pillar two rules in the OECD’s tax reform in 2024 will hurt the country’s ability to compete with low-tax rivals. (LegalAvocado)

• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development posted a summary of this week’s plenary meeting of the Forum on Tax Administration, which was held in in Singapore, not far from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. Tax commissioners and delegates gathered for the meeting agreed on new ways to collaborate on shaping the future of tax administration. They also agreed to expand their cooperation on implementing new global tax agreements, in particular the global minimum tax, the organization said. (OECD.org)

• As OECD tax chief Manal Corwin touts the merits of the global tax reform, including a global minimum tax and new rules to make sure tech giants pay tax where they earn money, it’s still not clear that the US is going to support the plan.

  (Techmonitor)

• As the United Nations looks to take a larger role in setting global tax policy, it has criticized the OECD for a “top-down” approach to its efforts to involve African and other developing-country jurisdictions in work on its two-pillar reform plan. A new OECD report to Group of Seven country finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Marrakesh this week makes technical and other recommendations for the world’s most developed countries to better take into account viewpoints and priorities of African and other developing-country jurisdictions in that work. (OECD.org)