Oxfam recently released a report exposing how corporate tax avoidance damages the host countries which has an especially bad impact on poorer countries.
This got me thinking, what does (or could) Fairphone do to encourage companies to pay a fair amount of tax in the countries in which it operates?
I doubt whether legislation could help but the Fairphone movement might help by highlighting the damage done by such behaviour and provide some sort of accredited branding which suppliers could be proud of (see #FairTaxMark )
Great idea, to take this into account.
Although I would guess, that the Fairphoners already have thought about that.
My guess:
It should do the trick, to select local companies, that are not able to locate wins and losses to their likeing with business-branches in other parts of the world.
The hard part would be to find such local companies. For some steps in the production-chain for a phone it might be easier, than for others. But that is something, Fairphone for sure has looked into.
To make global players pay local taxes to full extent? No idea, how that might be achieved, except by legislation and international agreement and cooperation of states.
They are situated in the Netherlands, for obvious reasons different from low tax.
Not the point here, I’m just trying to confuse people. I do doubt whether Fairphone should put a special effort in this. They might already do enough checks on the moral behaviour of companies.
All good points, thank you. I don’t think we can point at the Netherlands with any particular blame, all European countries play their part in allow massive corporate tax avoidance.