LONDON (Bywire News) - The millionaire ex-banker Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak is lobbying G7 partners to exclude Financial Services firms located in the City of London from Joe Biden's proposals for a Global Minimum Corporation Tax.
According to source close to negotiations, Sunak believes that the tax would unfairly hit banking bosses in the capital because they supposedly already "pay a fair share of tax".
When the agreement was announced on Saturday, Sunak lauded the deal - which would effectively outlaw tax havens across the globe - as "historic", and claimed that the "seismic" changes would create "a fairer tax system fit for the 21st century" that would significantly benefit UK taxpayers.
As reported by Bywire at the time, research conducted into the proposals found that a "15% Minimum Global Corporation Tax could raise an extra £13.5bn a year for the UK’s public purse, rising to over £22bn a year if the rate was raised to 25%."
However, it is believed that Sunak - who made his multi-million pound fortune working in the banking sector for the likes of Goldman Sachs - would prefer such a tax to only focus on multinational tech sector firms, such as Facebook, Google and Twitter.
And, confirming the news, a British official said:
“Our position is we want financial services companies to be exempt, and EU countries are in the same position.”
An initial iteration of the minimum corporation tax plans, produced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - who are leading negotiations between G7 countries - in October, made exemptions for financial services firms.
However, plans for exemptions for companies such as multinational banks and hedge funds were dropped in the proposals agreed upon by Sunak and other G7 partners on Saturday - but it is believed that the Chancellor, alongside a number of other G7 nations, are now lobbying to reinstate them.
Sunak began his career in banking sector with Goldman Sachs, making millions from the job shortly before the 2008 financial crash.
When questioned about whether he participated in the selling of risky financial products that caused the crash - such as subprime mortgage bonds - the Chancellor refused to answer.
And, in another job for investment fund TCI, Sunak made millions of pounds in bonuses for selling risky financial products that ultimately ended up costing the British taxpayer millions of pounds to bail them out.
(Writing by Tom D. Rogers, editing by Jess Miller.)