Global South Defies “Big Boys” as UN Tax Negotiations Resume

Speaking during an online media briefing Thursday ahead of the next negotiating session in New York from Aug. 3-13, Tove Maria Ryding, Tax Coordinator for Tax Justice Europe and the European Network on Debt and Development, said the convention should deliver a fair and effective alternative to the existing international tax system.

“The purpose of the UN tax convention is not to put lipstick on the pig that is our current international tax system but rather to replace it with a fair and effective alternative,” Ryding said.

She described the current framework as a “chaotic” network of thousands of bilateral tax treaties, arguing that decades of tax-making processes led by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, have produced a system marked by complexity and ineffectiveness.

Ryding said the new UN-led process represents a significant shift in global tax governance, particularly as developing countries seek a greater role in determining the rules that govern international taxation.

She said countries in the Global North initially resisted the UN process but have since returned to the negotiating table amid concerns that developing countries could move ahead and establish new tax rules without them.

“It’s very clear that they got [FOMO] when they saw that the developing countries were moving forward,” Ryding said, referring to the “fear of missing out” among wealthier countries.

Ryding said the shift also reflects a different approach to the role of the United States in global tax negotiations.

“The UN has a US last approach and the OECD has tried the US first approach and it didn’t become very successful,” she said.

She argued that the UN process provides an opportunity for more than 100 countries to agree on a common framework that reflects broader global interests rather than prioritizing the interests of individual powerful economies.

The negotiations are also expected to address longstanding concerns among developing countries over tax sovereignty and the use of “blacklists” targeting jurisdictions deemed noncooperative.

Ryding said these issues illustrate the inequalities embedded in the current international tax system and should be addressed through a more equitable global framework.

Charles Santiago, director of Tax and Fiscal Justice Asia and Monitoring Sustainability of Globalization, warned that developing countries should not expect wealthy nations or multinational corporations to voluntarily surrender advantages they have accumulated under the existing system.

“It’ll be very naive to think that the developed countries including big multinational corporations are going to give in without a fight,” Santiago said.

He urged developing countries, particularly members of the Group of 77, to remain united during the negotiations and push collectively for equitable taxation.

“This is going to be a fight, a struggle of developing countries to bring attention to an inequitable system that is operated in the world that needs to change,” Santiago said.

The briefing highlighted the significant financial stakes involved in the negotiations.

While corporate secrecy makes precise estimates difficult, advocates say several hundred billion dollars in potential tax revenues are lost globally each year.

Ryding warned that failure to reach a comprehensive global agreement could result in an increasingly fragmented system in which individual countries pursue their own tax policies.

The result, she said, could be “every country fighting for itself” to secure revenue, creating an even more complex and volatile international tax environment.

As negotiations resume in New York, advocates say the UN Tax Convention offers the Global South an opportunity to move from the margins to the center of global tax decision-making and push for a fairer distribution of taxing rights.

For Santiago, the choice facing developing countries is clear: continue with an entrenched system that has failed to deliver equitable outcomes or unite behind efforts to reshape the global tax architecture.