Global tax reform "will happen very quickly" - German Finance Minister

Reuters reports that German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said he does not expect hurdles to moving ahead with a planned global tax reform at a G20 meeting in Venice this weekend.

"Everything will happen very quickly now. The goal is very ambitious: we want to have everything ready already so that it becomes international practice in 2023," Scholz added.

Last week, 130 countries, representing more than 90% of global GDP, backed the biggest changes to cross-border corporate tax in more than a generation with new rules on where companies are taxed and a tax rate of at least 15%.

The package goes to G20 finance ministers next to give political endorsement at a meeting on Friday and Saturday in Venice. 

"We are talking about a lot of additional money for Europe and for Germany," Scholz said. "It's really about billions," he added, without giving exact figures.

"Then the main thing is to make sure we end the practice of tax avoidance that has crept in over the last years and decades," he said. "We will put an end to that. The tax-cutting race will come to an end."

"I am convinced that in the end we will manage to get European countries to all agree on these rules together," Scholz said. "From my point of view, they would apply in any case."

Scholz described the global minimum tax as a breakthrough and the biggest reform in decades.