It's true! G20 to impose uniform corporate tax

I read it at France 24. It must be true!

And it's long overdue. This will allow governments to collect the taxes from those corporate entities that shuffle their subsidiaries to low-tax jurisdictions. That's where the profits are made and the taxes are paid.

At a tax rate of zero or close to it.

This will cramp the style of Mitt Romney's Bain Capital and a thousand other corporate tax evaders.

Reminds me of the big tax case Irving Oil had in the Canadian courts back in the early '90's. I took a special interest in that case because I had just arrived in New Brunswick after being hounded into bankruptcy by Revenue Canada.

From the deck of my new home just below the Martello Tower we would watch the biggest oil tankers in the world glide up the Bay of Fundy to the Canaport oil offloading depot.

That's where oil from the worlds major oil export nations found its way to Canada's biggest oil refinery, owned by the Irvings.

Between the tanker and the oil refinery half a mile away, the oil was bought by an Irving subsidiary in tax-free Bermuda, and then sold at a higher price to Irving Oil.

That made the profits taxable in tax-free Bermuda.

Irving Oil won their case.

I didn't win mine.

NEWS FLASH: G20 PLAN UNIFORM CORPORATE TAX RATE!

That's a stunner! I heard it on the CBC News as I was driving the Farm Manager to the Foodland on the weekly resupply junket.

According to the CBC, the news came from a memo leaked from the Moscow G20 meeting this weekend.

I have since spent hours trying to nail the story down. Because it would be a great story. Imagine a single corporate tax rate all across the G20.

And since the G20 are the bully boys of the global economy, they can readily impose a uniform tax on the rest of the world.

Good-bye to corporate tax havens!

Hello billions of dollars for the common good!

Depending on where the tax was set, that could even be trillions!

Alas, I can't seem to find any corroboration for the CBC news story anywhere.

But I can find plenty of stories like this and this.

So I have reluctantly concluded that insofar as the G20 have agreed on a uniform corporate tax rate, the rate will be zero.