In France, hundreds of thousands of students are protesting, angered by run-down schools and chronic staff shortages. In 2024, young Kenyans took to the streets to demand fundamental political reform after the government, under International Monetary Fund (IMF) pressure to raise revenue, tried to impose levies on everyday essentials. Last year, the Philippines saw mass protests when a series of destructive storms exposed how billions of dollars earmarked for flood defences had been siphoned off through corruption. These protests had diverse origins, but they shared deep public anger at decisions about what gets funded and who pays for it.

The meeting rooms of the United Nations (UN) may seem distant from the fury of the streets, but negotiations under way to rewrite global tax rules could make a difference, if enough states back an ambitious treaty.

Rules set by the rich

At present, wealthy states set the rules. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international club of 38 major economies, has long functioned as the default authority. All other states have had to accept policies shaped by OECD members, with little real say.

Problems have mounted as the economy has globalised, with multinational corporations rising to the fore. They make their money in many countries but often book their profits in countries where corporate tax is low. A country where a multinational does much of its business may collect nothing, even though the corporation relies on public infrastructure and may cause environmental harm. Accounting practices are highly opaque, and a US-backed gag order shields corporations by preventing governments from naming those that shift profits to avoid tax.

No state can tackle profit shifting on its own, because corporations can move profits across borders at will. The task of coordinating states has fallen to the OECD, of which most states aren’t members, and which civil society organisations have long accused of showing weak leadership on tax cooperation.

In 2021, the OECD responded to international pressure by brokering a global tax deal under which 136 states agreed on a minimum tax floor for multinational corporations of 15 per cent and a partial reallocation of profits of major multinationals to countries where they do business. But implementation stalled as further rounds of talks took place.

Donald Trump repudiated the deal as soon as he took office in January 2025, calling it an unacceptable constraint on US sovereignty and threatening economic countermeasures against countries that tax US-headquartered companies. The deal was subsequently revised to give US-based companies sweeping exemptions. The OECD says over 65 states are now implementing the deal, but the concessions made to the USA have hollowed it out.

Trump’s might-is-right approach challenged the tax sovereignty of all other states, asserting that only the US government can tax US companies. But Trump may have inadvertently strengthened the case for a UN treaty by breaking the fragile OECD consensus and showing why stronger cooperation is needed as a safeguard against unilateral measures.

A more democratic arena

The UN route opened in December 2022, when the African group of states, led by Nigeria, pushed through a General Assembly resolution to kickstart discussions on international tax cooperation. This reflected years of campaigning by civil society and global south states to overcome the opposition of many global north states and the power of corporate lobbies. Two years later, another General Assembly resolution officially started the process to develop an international convention on tax cooperation. The US government walked out when treaty talks began in February 2025 and has urged others to follow, without success. Negotiations continue without it.

Shifting the debate to the UN, where all states are formally equal and there are established consultative practices, has been a democratic move. Negotiations are no longer the preserve of a minority of privileged states. In a globalised economy, everyone should get their say, and many are taking the opportunity. Ahead of the fifth session of negotiations, held in New York over two weeks in August, states, international organisations, businesses and an array of civil society organisations and academics submitted a broad range of written inputs, a sign of how much is at stake.

The August meeting was the first to discuss the convention’s ‘zero draft’, along with two draft protocols on cross-border services and tax dispute resolution. It made the dividing lines clear. Broadly, wealthier states want weaker provisions, including protection of current tax agreements, opt-outs for states, diluted language on taxing the super-rich and a limited role for a UN taxation secretariat. In contrast, many global south states want a stronger treaty, realignment of existing agreements with the convention, minimal opt-outs and a strong secretariat that can develop global south capacities to limit tax avoidance.

Wealthier states, home to many multinationals, stand accused of wanting a convention that changes little and leaves corporate tax avoidance largely unchallenged. Much remains to be decided as negotiations move to their sixth session in Nairobi, Kenya, in November and December, ahead of the text’s planned submission to the UN General Assembly for adoption by the end of next year.

Huge stakes

Global north states resisting change should acknowledge that the status quo is untenable. Corporations and super-rich people use complex and secretive schemes to hang onto huge sums that could make a difference to billions of people’s lives. In the absence of global rules, states are tempted into a race to the bottom, lowering corporate tax rates in the hope of stimulating economic activity. But by doing so, they deprive themselves of the revenues needed to pay for public services, deliver the Sustainable Development Goals and respond to climate change. They do so even as many people’s economic anger is fuelling demands for political change.

Research from the Tax Justice Network suggests that making multinationals pay tax in proportion to their economic activity in each country, rather than only in low-tax jurisdictions, would increase global corporate tax revenues by up to US$500 billion a year. This could mean that, a single year, global south states could collect more than they all owe the IMF. The Tax Justice Network has calculated that recovering the revenue lost to tax abuse could ensure 17 million more people a year have access to clean water and 34 million more have basic sanitation. Over a decade, that would mean an estimated 600,000 fewer child deaths.

There’s enough money to fix big problems. It’s just concentrated in the wrong hands. This is no accident. It reflects the vast political lobbying power that flows from economic power. Fairer taxation is a matter of social justice, since it seeks to redress an imbalance and redistribute resources from the wealthiest to those in need.

Civil society’s role

Civil society organisations have played a strong role in shaping the debate and advocating for a treaty, lobbying delegations and making written submissions. But work remains to offer narratives that connect these actions with the anger many people feel at crumbling public services, the impacts of climate change, economic inequality and taxation systems that hit everyday people hard while barely troubling the wealthy. Awareness-raising and campaigning are particularly needed in the wealthier states that want a less ambitious treaty, even though all the research shows that they, as well as global south countries, stand to benefit from fairer taxation.

Civil society will need to keep pushing for ambition in the coming negotiations, as powerful states can be expected to try to water down the text, negotiate opt-outs or ultimately refuse to ratify the treaty. Civil society must partner with supportive states to ensure the treaty is binding, sets global minimum tax levels for corporations and the super-rich, and upholds the principle that multinationals pay tax where they make their money.

The treaty process comes at a time of crisis for multilateralism, as powerful states refuse to cooperate, prioritise bilateral deal-making and defund and withdraw from multilateral institutions. There’s zero prospect of the billionaire-dominated Trump administration signing up to a redistributive tax treaty. Civil society will need to watch for political shifts and use them to build momentum wherever possible.

Even then, a treaty on its own won’t necessarily change much. This will be a framework convention, like the one first developed to address climate change, meaning that states agree broad rules and set up a system to elaborate on them. Constant engagement will therefore be needed. Other solutions need to be pursued as well, including transparency over ownership of private bodies, closer intergovernmental tax data sharing and stronger national tax agency capacities.

Civil society must also make the case that progress in making companies and rich elites pay more tax must come with measures to improve the accountability and transparency of government spending decisions. As the Philippines protests showed, spending doesn’t guarantee better public services and improvements to people’s lives if governments make opaque and unscrutinised decisions, which are a recipe for corruption. People must be able to articulate their needs and civil society must be able to hold decision-makers accountable to ensure money is properly spent and goes to where it’s needed. This requires governments to respect civic space.

The path is hard but the rewards could be great, in the form of redistributive measures that would see the wealthy pay a fairer share to address national and planetary problems, and offer an answer to the anger on the streets. Civil society must keep up the pressure.

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