In the past 40 years, multinational corporations have shaken up the global economy. They have become immensely wealthy, earning over $3 trillion in profits each year. Yet, they pay hardly any taxes. Strangely, governments seem powerless in the face of tax evasion, which deprives them of hundreds of billions in revenue, while inequalities, poverty, and populism are on the rise. With taxes cut to the bone, governments no longer have the means to finance a healthcare and education system for all, pensions, let alone the fight against climate change, which has taken on an existential dimension.
Finding funds for a fairer and more sustainable society is nevertheless possible: all it takes is to put an end to multinational tax evasion. This is the preoccupation of a handful of NGOs and international experts. In 2015, these “knights of tax justice” established the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT), bringing together top economists like Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, and Thomas Piketty, author of the global bestseller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” as well as former politicians Eva Joly in France, Wayne Swan and José Antonio Ocampo, former ministers of finance in Australia and Colombia, respectively.
Their goal? To ensure that multinational corporations finally pay their fair share of taxes. To that end, they propose creating a global tax on the profits of multinationals. Initially dismissed as dreamers, these activists keep on fighting–drafting reports, pressuring ministers and holding conferences, as they emphasize the urgency of reforming the global tax system.
After six years, they succeed in making their proposals, long dismissed as utopian, the backbone of a historic agreement adopted in October 2021 by 136 countries, an agreement that sets a global minimum tax on the profits of multinationals. This measure is expected to generate $220 billion in tax revenue for governments and potentially put an end to tax havens. For ICRICT, this agreement is not enough, but it is the first major change in a hundred years, and the status quo of tax evasion has been disrupted.
Combining filming on four continents and futuristic animations inspired by the Star Wars universe, Tax Wars tells the story of how the ideas of these activists have gradually succeeded and turned public opinion against the most powerful actors in the global economy, in order to end the robbery of the century.