Mr. Angel Gurría:

The substance is that this matter is too important to be urgent. One does not need to come up with some short-term solutions if they are not well thought out or consensus based and they do not take a longer-term approach. We must not do anything today that will make it difficult to have a long-term solution. If one feels compelled to do something because one needs to come up with something politically, let us talk about it and be very careful because many countries, including Ireland, are saying we should do something after we have thought about it very carefully, consulted and talked among ourselves. After all, according to the schedule, we should produce a final proposal in 2020, which means there is no need to deliver a proposal now.

The only issue is that there seems to be political urgency, an emergency almost, about being able to say digital companies are being taxed. The issue is not about digital companies but about the digital economy. We have an increasingly digitalised economy, with everything becoming digitalised, and the question is how to deal with this in terms of taxation. Imagine that the tax base is reducing dramatically because everything is digital and digital is not being taxed. How do we come up with a means of taxing a modern economy, period? The issue is not about taxing Google, Apple or Amazon but about taking a very hard look at the whole of the new economy.