G20 Endorses India's Concerns On Money, Beyond

BRISBANE: The G20 Summit concluded here with its leaders endorsing India's concerns over black money, while promising a new global transparency standard that will modernize international tax rules and allow automatic exchange of related information between governments to curb illicit outflow of money estimated at over $1 trillion annually.

India, being represented at the summit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, immediately called this development an unprecedented success, and said the next step will be the delivery of an action plan, along with the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The two forums represent 44 countries and 90 per cent of the world economy.

"We are taking actions to ensure the fairness of the international tax system and to secure countries’ revenue bases. Profits should be taxed where economic activities deriving the profits are performed and where value is created," the G20 leaders said in a joint communique at the end of the eighth summit, promising to finalise work by end-2015.

This was precisely what Prime Minister Narendra Modi had specifically said and sought during a session on "Delivering Global Economic Resilience" on the second day of the summit in this west Australian city, while also wanting systems that will help countries in getting back the ill-gotten monies stashed away abroad.

"At this Summit, G20 Leaders have endorsed a new global transparency standard that will leave no place for tax cheats to hide. More than 90 jurisdictions will begin automatic exchange of tax information, using a common reporting standard by 2017 or 2018," said Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot, the summit chair and host.