Assume we’re going back and forth in negotiations. After a few back and forth a, with small changes each time, I send you over some language and you say: “That’ll work, I’ll draw up a contract and send it over to you”.

At that point, I would tell people internally to my company that we have a deal with that client.

But we don’t count on that revenue arriving, until we have a signed contract in place. Anything can happen between the negotiation and the contract being signed. The client could come back to us and say “there’s been a sudden change in priorities on our end, and we’re cancelling the project”. Or they might come back with any other change that they want “when I sent this to my VP, he said the top line number wouldn’t work, and we need to move it again, I’m so sorry!”

Yes, we don’t consider anything to be legally binding until the contract is signed. We “had a deal”, but deals can fall through.

If you deal in any contract worth more than a few hundred dollars, I really recommend you take the same attitude: everything is provisional until the final agreement is written down and signed.

> Which car company do you work for?

Was that necessary? Really? You can make your point without attempting to attack people.

"everything is provisional until the final agreement is written down and signed"

Here's what I read:

"The G7 group of advanced economies has reached a historic deal to make multinational companies pay more tax"

Is that true?

> > "The G7 group of advanced economies has reached a historic deal to make multinational companies pay more tax"

> Is that true?

Yep! Because a "deal" can be something that is provisional. "Reached a deal" to me doesn't in any way mean that the deal has been executed, finalized and is legally binding. It means the first step of negotiations has been completed and all parties are agreeing to the terms of the deal.

Look, we're just arguing about the semantics of how final "reached a deal" is. I think it's not very final (especially when discussing large multiparty negotiations like the ones described here). You seem to think it refers to an absolutely final step. That's fine! English is messy and we can disagree about what specific phrases mean. I'll just caution you that most of the world will use the phrase "reached a deal" to refer to negotiations that are preliminarily complete, but the terms not having been formally adopted or legally finalized.

For example the "Brexit deal" was "reached" on December 24, 2020 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/24/europe/brexit-deal-uk-eu-gbr-...).

The deal wasn't approved by the British parliament until December 30, 2020 (https://news.yahoo.com/uk-parliament-approves-historic-brexi...).

That deal went into effect on January 1, 2021.

However it wasn't "finalized" until it was also ratified by the EU parliament on April 28, 2021 (https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210428-european-parliam...), nearly 5 months after it had gone into effect!

If I say we had a deal and you say well we did last Tuesday but not now, I know not to make deals with you ever again.

That's totally fair! I don't disagree that people who reach a deal shouldn't change the deal after that point (though the UK government seems to think it's fine).

But, suppose the following events happen:

- we reach a deal on some cool project

- reporters announce that we have a deal on the cool project

- I decide to back out of our agreement and not go forward with the cool project

- reporters announce that I backed out of our agreement

- You condemn me for my treachery, and tell everyone that I'm a backstabbing two-faced used-car dealer

- reporters announce that you have condemned me

The reporters aren't wrong at any step in this! We did have a deal, and it's correct to report on it and correct to say we had a deal. Even if the deal ultimately fell through to my used-car treachery.

I'm not saying people shouldn't hold to the deals that they make (though you seem to think that's my argument, so I must've made my point poorly somewhere along the way). 100% of my point is "reached a deal" doesn't mean it's final, and it's OK and even correct to say that a group of people have reached a deal—even if you don't think that deal is feasible.

Another example: Let's say that I form a deal with 10 investors that I will guarantee them a risk-free 50% annual return on their investment. You would be absolutely correct to say that I was probably lying! You would be correct to say it's clear that malfeasance exists! But you would be wrong to say that we didn't reach that deal. We did reach that deal, even if you think there is a 0% chance that the deal will actually be accomplished in the real world.

Couldn’t you first ask to finalize it in writing?

>> So if I'm negotiating with you and you tell me we have a deal, I should consider that to be something that may or may not happen, may or may not be effective, and may or may not be legally binding?

I hope you don't touch contracts in your job. Until a contract is signed nothing is official.

OK. Until a contract is signed, something is not a "historic" deal, is that right?

There's all sorts of outcomes here. While you may be right that the US will not sign on to the deal it might still have to deal with some consequences. E.g. while Yellen may not have the ability influence US tax laws there are also foreign tax laws that are part of this over which McConnell has no control. Let's say the rest of the G7/G20/OECD changes the way they tax global companies, if the US doesn't ratify their side there's still plenty of real world consequences. I think Yellen's agreement does count as in this is the US's (sort of foreign policy?) position, i.e. the rest of the world can proceed to make changes based on that agreement even though Yellen does not have the authority to commit to changing US tax laws.

>> I think Yellen's agreement does count as in this is the US's (sort of foreign policy?)

No it doesn't work like that.

To get anything done, you need Republican votes. I have no idea, I haven't checked this afternoon, how many Republican votes do you have for a minimum corporate tax?

That's what I want to know, I'm guessing it is zero, but let me know what the number is.

I'm not sure why Canada imposing a tax on Google's revenue in Canada requires US Republican votes? Or what the Republicans would do about it? So seems like we can get a lot of things done without those votes. Most of these companies are US based and they are effectively dodging taxes in other countries, it's not the US tax laws that impact those for the most part.

There's a term, G7, what are the 7?

This isn't set in stone, and indeed was G8 a few years ago.

Indeed. Luckily, “the world” ≠ ”the US”.

> To get anything done, you need Republican votes.

This seems to be the kind of financial thing that fits right into reconciliation, which means you don't need Republican votes.

Isn't ratifying a treaty something completely different?

If they want to make this a formal treaty, yes.

But it could be an informal agreement between the leaders of these countries, that they will all pass such laws. In that case, passing a law that changes the corporate tax rate would fit into a reconciliation package with no issues.

Though, if it’s an informal agreement then no such law even needs to be passed, since our corporate tax rate is above the agreed minimum.

Offhand, does someone know which countries that belong to the G7 and made this "historic agreement" have higher tax rates than that agreed upon?

Edit In an alternate universe I wish the title was"G7 agrees to carbon tax" that would certainly level the playing field...I mean surely intrinsically FANG's are highly carbon intensive if you took into account the pollution they help generate through added energy usage (delivery trucks every day, lots of packaging, server farms etc) and the highly paid jobs which fuel inflation, consumption and speculation...(p.s. please don't feel ruffled)

> Isn't ratifying a treaty something completely different?

Sure, but there is a distinction between treaties in international law and those under the Constitution; by far the most common way for treaties in the international law sense to be adopted in tbe US in the last several decades is as Congressional-executive agreements, which are, procedurally, either normal legislation submitted after an executive-negotiated agreement or an executive-negotiated agreement under authority granted by normal legislation.

Reconciliation requires no Republican votes.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/02/05/what-is-r...

You think the Constitutional right of Congress "To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises" can be wiped out with reconciliation?

To be clear, Constitutionally the United States Senate only needs a majority to pass a law that changes the Taxes collected from corporations.

The Senate Filibuster which requires a 60-vote majority is not a Constitutional provision, and you wouldn't strictly need a Treaty for this agreement, if all the countries simply adopted the same tax provisions.

So, if the Democrats had the vote for it, they could pass this law with 0 Republican votes. In fact, since raising taxes is a budgetary measure, they could absolutely pass the corporate tax increase on reconciliation and do it with 0 Republican votes and without touching the filibuster. So, it seems quite plausible to me that this will happen.

Reconciliation is a process within Congress by which the Senate does not impose its not-Constitutionally-required supermajority requirement to certain budget-impacting measures.

So, no, its use doesn’t bypass Constitutional powers (not rights, which are not attributes of government bodies) of Congress, it is a means by which Congress has chosen to exercise them.

You are not going to ratify a treaty with the required 2/3 votes in the Senate via reconciliation.

You don't need to ratify a treaty through reconciliation. There's no need for this to be done with a formal treaty. It could simply be each of the nations passing laws that do the same thing.

If the Senate passes a law that changes the corporate tax rate to a certain amount, that is a budgetary measure that could absolutely be passed with reconciliation.

Yes, this law wouldn't be a treaty, but it could have a similar effect.

> If the Senate passes a law that changes the corporate tax rate to a certain amount, that is a budgetary measure that could absolutely be passed with reconciliation.

If it was revenue-neutral, sure. That is unlikely to be the case with changes to corporate tax rates. And even then, you are going to have a hard time getting even 50 votes.

> If it was revenue-neutral, sure.

No, revenue-neutrality doesn't weigh in favor of being eligible for reconciliation; a measure must principally address either spending, revenue, or the debt limit to be eligible for that process.

That’s an incorrect description of the budget reconciliation process.

One of the budget reconciliation categories is explicitly for revenue, which means being revenue-neutral would make it harder to pass under reconciliation.

Being an aspect that explicitly impacts revenue makes it much easier to pass under the revenue reconciliation process. In fact, adjusting those rates would be a pretty straight-down-the-middle use of reconciliation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(United_State...

> You are not going to ratify a treaty with the required 2/3 votes in the Senate via reconciliation

Which is among the reasons this won’t technically be a treaty in US law (even if it is in international law), but a Congressional-executive agreement [0].

[0] https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Congressional...

Though if it is sold as a missile against big tech...

The US corporate tax rate is 21%, above the 15% minimum that was proposed. Furthermore, it was the Trump administration who introduced GILTI and BEAT, both measures aimed at taxing foreign profits in low wage and low tax countries. Now, of course, republicans are probably loathe to give the White House any "wins", so that might throw a spanner in the works, but republicans don't have any love for tax havens.