2026年06月六级第1套仔细阅读 Passage 2 原文翻译及答案解析

About a decade ago, the G-20, a forum of the world's biggest economies, agreed to crack down on multinational corporations' abusive use of tax havens. This resulted in a plan that aimed to curb practices that shielded a large chunk of corporate profits from tax authorities.

大约十年前，由世界最大经济体组成的论坛 G-20 同意打击跨国公司滥用避税天堂的行为。这促成了一项计划，旨在遏制那些使大量企业利润免于被税务机关征税的做法。

But, instead of reining in the use of tax havens—countries such as the Bahamas and Cayman Islands with very low or no effective tax rates—the problem has only gotten worse.

但结果并没有遏制住对避税天堂——如实际税率极低或为零的巴哈马和开曼群岛等国家——的利用，问题反而愈演愈烈。

In a new study, we measured the excessive profits reported in tax havens that cannot be explained by ordinary economic activity such as employees, factories and research in that country. Our findings show a striking pattern of artificial shifting of paper profits to tax havens by corporations, which has been relentless since the 1980s.

在一项新研究中，我们测算了在避税天堂申报的、无法用当地雇员、工厂和研究等正常经济活动来解释的超额利润。我们的研究结果显示出一种惊人的模式：企业人为地将账面利润转移到避税天堂，自20世纪80年代以来一直有增无减。

We found that the world's biggest multinational businesses shifted 37% of the profits— $969 billion—they earned in other countries to tax havens in 2019. The figure was less than 2% in the 1970s. The main reasons for the large increase were the growth of the tax avoidance industry in the 1980s and U.S. policies that made it easier to shift profits from high-tax countries to tax havens.

我们发现，2019年，世界最大的跨国企业将它们在其他国家赚取利润的37%——即9690亿美元——转移到了避税天堂。这一比例在20世纪70年代还不到2%。大幅增长的主要原因是20世纪80年代避税产业的兴起，以及美国出台的、使利润更容易从高税国家转移到避税天堂的政策。

We estimate that the amount of corporate taxes lost as a result reached 10% of total corporate revenue in 2019, up from less than 0.1% in the 1970s. In 2019, the total government tax loss globally was $250 billion. U.S. multinational corporations alone accounted for about half of that, followed by the U.K. and Germany.

我们估计，由此导致的企业税流失在2019年达到企业总收入的10%，而在20世纪70年代还不到0.1%。2019年，全球政府税收损失总额为2500亿美元。仅美国跨国公司就约占其中的一半，其次是英国和德国。

How do policymakers fix this? So far, the world as a whole has been trying to solve this problem by cutting or scrapping corporate taxes in a very gradual way. In the past 40 years, the global effective corporate tax rate has fallen from 23% to 17%. At the same time, governments have relied more heavily on consumption taxes.

政策制定者如何解决这一问题？到目前为止，整个世界一直试图以非常渐进的方式，通过削减或取消企业税来解决这一问题。在过去40年里，全球实际企业税率已从23%降至17%。与此同时，各国政府越来越依赖消费税。

But the root cause of profit-shifting is the incentives involved, such as generous or lenient corporate tax rates in other countries. If countries could agree on a global minimum corporate tax rate of, say, 20%, the problem of profit-shifting would largely disappear, as tax havens would simply cease to exist.

但利润转移的根本原因在于其中的激励因素，比如其他国家慷慨或宽松的企业税率。如果各国能够就一个全球最低企业税率——比如说20%——达成一致，利润转移问题将在很大程度上消失，因为避税天堂将不复存在。

This type of mechanism is exactly what more than 130 countries signed onto in 2021, with implementation of a 15% minimum tax set to begin soon in the EU, U.K., Japan, Indonesia and many other countries. The U.S. has notably not been able to pass this legislation.

正是这种机制，130多个国家在2021年签署加入，欧盟、英国、日本、印度尼西亚等许多国家即将开始实施15%的最低税率。值得注意的是，美国一直未能通过这项立法。

Our research suggests implementing this type of tax reform is necessary in reversing the shift of ever-greater amounts of corporate profits to tax havens—instead of being taxed by the governments where they operate and create value.

我们的研究表明，要扭转越来越多的企业利润流向避税天堂——而不是由其经营并创造价值所在国政府征税——的趋势，实施这类税制改革是必要的。