Global tax deal backed by 130 nations

Yahoo – AFP, Jürgen HECKER, July 1, 2021 

US digital giants are the main targets of the new tax

A total of 130 countries have agreed a global tax reform ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share wherever they operate, the OECD said on Thursday, but some EU states refused to sign up. 

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a statement that global companies, including US behemoths Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple would be taxed at a rate of at least 15 percent once the deal is implemented. 

The new tax regime will add some $150 billion to government coffers globally once it comes into force, which the OECD said it hoped would be in 2023. 

"The framework updates key elements of the century-old international tax system, which is no longer fit for purpose in a globalised and digitalised 21st century economy," the OECD said. 

The formal agreement follows an endorsement by the G7 group of wealthy nations last month, and negotiations now move to a meeting of the G20 group of developed and emerging economies on July 9-10 in Venice, Italy. 

US President Joe Biden said the latest deal "puts us in striking distance of full global agreement to halt the race to the bottom for corporate taxes." 

Germany, another backer of the tax reform, hailed it as a "colossal step towards tax justice", and France said it was "the most important tax agreement in a century". 

British finance minister Rishi Sunak, whose country holds the G7 presidency, said "the fact that 130 countries across the world, including all of the G20, are now on board, marks a further step in our mission to reform global tax". 

'In everyone's interest'

But EU low-tax countries Ireland and Hungary declined to sign up to the agreement reached in the OECD framework, the organisation said, highlighting lingering divisions on global taxation. 

Both countries are part of a group of EU nations also including Luxembourg and Poland that have relied on low tax rates to attract multinationals and build their economies. 

Ireland, the EU home to tech giants Facebook, Google and Apple, has a corporate tax rate of just 12.5 percent. 

Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has warned that the new rules could see Ireland lose 20 percent of its corporate revenue. 

On Thursday, Donohoe said Ireland still "broadly supports" the deal, but not the 15-percent tax floor. 

The tax plan got a much-needed boost from Joe Bidens's administration

"There is much to finalise before a comprehensive agreement is reached", he said, adding that Ireland would "constructively engage" in further discussions. 

Also expressing concerns is Switzerland -- known for its banking secrecy laws -- which said it would support the measures despite "major reservations" and that it hoped the interests of "small, innovative countries" be taken into account. 

An agreement for the implementation of the plan is planned for October. 

Nine of the 139 participants in the talks have so far not signed on to the agreement. 

But China, whose position was being closely watched as it offers tax incentives to key sectors, endorsed the agreement. 

"It is in everyone's interest that we reach a final agreement among all Inclusive Framework Members as scheduled later this year," said OECD Secretary General Mathias Cormann. 

"This package does not eliminate tax competition, as it should not, but it does set multilaterally agreed limitations on it," Cormann said, adding that "it also accommodates the various interests across the negotiating table, including those of small economies and developing jurisdictions". 

'More equitable' global economy 

Finance chiefs have characterised a minimum tax as necessary to stem competition between countries over who can offer multinationals the lowest rate. 

For Biden, a global tax agreement will help maintain US competitiveness since he has proposed hiking domestic corporate taxes to pay for an infrastructure and jobs programme with a price tag of around $2 trillion. 

Biden -- whose tax plans face a potentially uphill battle in Congress -- hailed an "important step in moving the global economy forward to be more equitable for workers and middle class families in the United States and around the world." 

He noted that those nations who signed up make up more than 90 percent of the world's economy. 

The OECD's statement said the package "will provide much-needed support to governments needing to raise necessary revenues" to fix their budgets and invest in measures to back the post-Covid recovery. 

Oxfam, a charity, meanwhile said that the deal fell short of a tax level needed to give poorer countries a sufficient share of additional tax revenue. 

Calling the deal "skewed-to-the-rich and completely unfair", Oxfam said that signatories had missed a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a profoundly more equal world".

Europe turns on Facebook, Google for digital tax revamp

Yahoo – AFP, Céline LE PRIOUX, November 19, 2017

Companies like Google are being urged to pay more tax (AFP Photo/
JOSH EDELSON)

Brussels (AFP) - They have revolutionised the way we live, but are US tech giants the new robber barons of the 21st century, banking billions in profit while short-changing the public by paying only a pittance in tax?

With public coffers still strained years after the worst of the debt crisis, EU leaders have agreed to tackle the question, spurred on by French President Emmanuel Macron who has slammed the likes of Google, Facebook and Apple as the "freeloaders of the modern world".

As recently as March, five of the world's top 10 valued companies were Silicon Valley behemoths: Apple, Google's Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. (Germany's SAP was Europe's biggest and 56th on the global list).

But tax rules today are designed for yesterday's economy when US multinationals -- such as General Motors, IBM or McDonald's-- entered countries loudly, with new factories, jobs and more taxes for the taking.

These firms had what tax specialists call "permanent establishment", when companies showed a clear physical presence measured and taxed through tangible, real world assets.

But today in most EU nations, the US tech titans exist almost exclusively in the virtual world, their services piped through apps to smart phones and tablets from designers and data servers oceans away.

Ghost-like, Silicon Valley has turned Europe's economies upside down, but often with just a skeleton staff and some office space in markets with millions of users or customers.

Nation-less

According to EU law, to operate across Europe, multinationals have almost total liberty to choose a home country of their choosing. Not surprisingly, they choose small, low tax nations such as Ireland, the Netherlands or Luxembourg.

Thus, it is through Ireland that Facebook draws its wealth from millions of accounts across Europe. There are 33 million accounts in France and 31 million in Germany, according to recent data.

While users enjoy the platform, Facebook tracks likes, comments and page views and sells the data to companies who then target consumers.

But unlike the economy of old, Facebook sells its data to French companies not from France but from a great, nation-less elsewhere, with no phone number, address or physical "presence" for a customer who probably cares little.

It is in states like Ireland, whose official tax rate of 12.5 percent is the lowest in Europe, that the giants have parked their EU headquarters and book profits from revenues made across the bloc.

Indeed, actual revenues from advertising are minimal in France and Germany, but at Facebook HQ Ireland they grew to 7.9 billion euros, even though the vast majority does not come from the tiny EU island-nation of a mere 2.5 million users.

Google follows the same pattern: in Germany in 2015, it had a little over 71 million users, in France just over 55 million. But in both nations, revenues are minimal.

Yet, in Ireland, where the number of search engine users is less than five million, revenues for Google-parent Alphabet reached 22.6 billion euros in 2015.

According to an analysis by Paul Tang, a specialist on tax issues at the European Parliament, France lost 741 million euros in tax revenue and Germany 889 million euros between 2013 and 2015 due to so-called "tax planning" by Google and Facebook.

'No transparency'

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development believes that such tax schemes cost governments around the world as much as $240 billion a year in lost revenue, according to a 2015 estimate.

"The actual activity of each company, including US tech giants, is not known," said Manon Aubry, spokeswoman for the NGO Oxfam.

"Beyond the number of accounts or users in each country, it would be necessary to know in the case of Google for example, the amount of advertising sales in each country. We do not have it."

For car-ride smartphone service Uber, "we need to know the number of rides, but we don't have it," she said.

"One of the first issues, therefore, is that of transparency: to rule that large companies publish data on activities and taxes paid in all the countries where they are present."

To the European Commission, the digital shortfall on tax is clear. The effective tax rate on the profit of digital giants in the EU averages only nine percent, while that of traditional companies exceeds 20 percent, it said.

Facebook draws its wealth from millions of accounts across Europe by
being based in Ireland (AFP Photo/Justin TALLIS)

'Political crap'

Apple, also based in Ireland, became one of the EU's most emblematic tax cases when Competition Commissioner Margarethe Vestager ordered the iconic iPhone maker to pay 13 billion euros in back-taxes.

Vestager said the US giant had benefitted from illegal state aid, a gift from Ireland in exchange for choosing Dublin as its headquarters, with thousands of jobs at stake in the deal.

Brussels says Dublin's red carpet treatment accorded Apple an effective corporate tax rate of one percent on its European profits in 2003 -- a rate that decreased to a scant 0.005 percent in 2014 -- just a fraction of the official rate.

"It's total political crap," Apple chief executive Tim Cook barked at the time.

Undeterred, Vestager has gone after similar arrangements, such as those revealed in the Luxleaks scandal that exposed deals struck between Luxembourg and a long list of multinationals, including online US retail giant Amazon.

Faced with this situation, several solutions are under study.

Driven by Macron, France has proposed an unusual idea that has so far divided Europe: tax the US tech giants on sales generated in each European country, rather than on the profits that are cycled through low-tax countries.

France says this proposal, presented by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire in September, has received the support of some 20 countries, including Germany, Italy and Spain.

But there is fierce opposition from states like Cyprus, Malta, Ireland or Luxembourg -- countries that have linked their EU membership to low corporate tax and thus transformed their economies from rural backwaters to financial hubs in a globalised world.

Global, not EU, solution

Member states now agree that the problem would be best addressed at the international level, in the G20 or by the OECD, in order to prevent a high-tech exodus from the EU.

Caught by surprise by the French initiative, the European Commission announced at the end of September that it will also propose solutions in 2018.

Ideally, Brussels agrees that there needs to be a major reform of international tax rules, which would establish a closer link between the way value is created and the place where it is taxed.

Without rejecting the French proposal, the commission wants to dust off an old project from 2011 -- for a long time deadlocked because of the differences among the 28.

Relaunched in October 2016, the idea has one of the most cumbersome acronyms ever to come out of Brussels: the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base or CCCTB -- an ambitious bid to consolidate a company's tax base across the EU.

This draft legislation is currently being examined by the 28 EU member states and taxation of the digital economy could easily be included in the scope of the rules that may be adopted.

Under the plan, all multinationals operating in the EU with total sales of more than 750 million euros would be fixed at only one place of taxation, with one tax administration.

However, this tax would be distributed in all the countries where the company operates, and not according to the level of booked profit in each of these states, but according to the level of activity.

This level of activity in each member state would be measured using a combination of factors, including the number of employees, the importance of tangible assets (buildings, machinery, etc.) and sales.

French MEP Alain Lamassoure, co-rapporteur of the project, proposes to add a fourth idea: the volume of personal data collected and used by a digital platform wherever its services are used.

But in Europe, all is made infinitely more complicated since the adoption of new European legislation on tax matters requiring unanimity of the EU's current 28 members.

In addition to these European proposals, the OECD is working on a global solution, which it must present to the G20 finance ministers at their next meeting in April in Washington.

This initiative would have the merit of including Europe as well as the United States, Japan and emerging countries.

Until last October, the United States had dragged its feet in efforts to better tax its national champions, but changed attitude. Specifically, it agreed to set up a working group with France in the OECD.

"The Americans are in the same situation as us: their own tax system is not adapted to the current economy and they too are experiencing very substantial revenue losses that must be compensated," EU economics commissioner Pierre Moscovici said.

"Taxation of the US tech giants is a global problem and the answer should be as well."

Panama Papers showed vulnerability of whole system: Panama president

Yahoo – AFP, May 3, 2016

Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela delivers keynote address at a luncheon
during the Washington Conference on the Americas at the State Department on
May 3, 2016 in Washington, DC (AFP Photo/Mandel Ngan)

Washington (AFP) - The scandal triggered by the Panama Papers leak of information on how and where the world's wealthy stash funds to avoid detection or taxes underscored many countries' vulnerabilities, President Juan Carlos Varela said Tuesday.

Speaking at the State Department in Washington, the Panamanian president said the documents "reveal a worldwide problem, that involves many countries with legal and financial institutions" vulnerable to actions "that are not in the public interest."

Mossack Fonseca's founder lawyer Ramon

 Fonseca is a friend of Panama's President 

Juan Carlos Varela (shown here) and, until 

March, served as a senior advisor in his 

cabinet (AFP Photo/Rodrigo Arangua)

To that end, countries need to improve transparency and information sharing, Varela argued.

"We urge the international community to maintain a respectful dialogue through diplomatic channels," he added.

Panama and the United States last week signed an agreement on sharing of back account information in a step Panama's finance minister hailed as proof of his country's cooperation in fighting tax evasion.

The bilateral agreement comes weeks after the Panama Papers, a series of reports around the world revealing how one Panamanian law firm set up offshore entities to help the world's wealthy stash their assets.

Following the revelations, Panama has come under intense international pressure to open its financial sector to greater transparency or risk being put back on a global "tax haven" blacklist.

While the government has long said it is committed to that goal and has made some reforms in that direction, it has so far not signed up to an international standard on automatic sharing of tax information set by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela, left, sits with Singapore's President 

Tony Tan, right, for a meeting at the Istana or presidential palace on Friday, 

April 22, 2016, in Singapore. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Related Article:

Switzerland, Singapore join clampdown on bank secrecy (Update)

Why few Americans appear in the Panama Papers

Yahoo –AFP, Jeremy Tordjman, April 8, 2016

Issues of the German daily "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" featuring the "Panama Papers"
 with illustrations by German artist Peter M Hoffmann depicting heads of state
(AFP Photo/Christof Stache)

Washington (AFP) - From Russia to China, and Britain to Iceland, the revelations of the "Panama Papers" have tarnished officials and the wealthy over the implication that they hide riches offshore.

But one group is not there: prominent Americans. US tycoons and politicians are notably absent in the leaked files of the Panama law offices of Mossack Fonseca, which created thousands of shell companies worldwide to hide the identities of their ultimate owners, some of whom may have been evading taxes.

There is Hollywood mogul David Geffen, the Asylum Records and Dreamworks SKG co-founder. But there are no Americans comparable to Iceland's prime minister, or henchmen of the Russian president -- all in the Panama records -- at least in what has been disclosed so far.

"There are a lot of Americans, but they are more like private citizens," said Marina Walker Guevara, deputy director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists which coordinated the investigation and release of the Panama Papers.

However, that hardly means Americans have fully embraced financial transparency, she told AFP.

"It doesn't show that the US is outside of the offshore system; the US is actually a big player."

The Tax Justice Network's Financial Secrecy Index (AFP Photo/Alain

Bommenel, Jean Michel Cornu)

Other options

One possible reason for their small presence in the Panama documents is that US citizens hoping to hide funds and activities offshore were not drawn to Spanish-speaking Panama as a haven, when there are options like the British Virgin islands and the Cayman Islands.

"Americans have so many tax havens to choose from," said Nicholas Shaxson, author of "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World," a 2011 book on secretive centers for hiding money.

Indeed, Americans do not have to go abroad to hide funds and activities behind anonymous corporations: they can create them at home.

States like Delaware and Wyoming allow the creation of such companies, for just a few hundred dollars, that conceal their ultimate financial beneficiary.

And while US banks are normally required to "know their customers," they can bypass that rule and open accounts for shell companies, ensuring total discretion for someone who wants to move money around quietly.

The US Treasury is moving to stop the practice, which can be used by arms and drug traffickers to launder funds and lands the United States in third in the Tax Justice Network's ranking of the world's least transparent countries, well above Panama.

"We're in the last stages of drafting the final rule," a Treasury official told AFP.

The most popular tax havens (AFP Photo/Laurence Saubadu, Jonathan Jacobsen)

'Very frightened'

But there is another possible reason that Americans are not so visible in the Panama Papers.

Spurred by the need to halt huge, blatant tax evasion by Americans using foreign banks, Washington in recent years has cracked down with lawsuits, arrests and tighter laws that have targeted both the banks offering safe haven and those hiding money in them.

Swiss banks were hit in particular. UBS and Credit Suisse, respectively, had to pay fines of $780 million and $2.6 billion for having helped US citizens hide money.

The result, Shaxson said, is that now "there are a few tax havens around the world that are very frightened of American clients, because they know that the US can hit them."

Nevertheless, the seeming absence of Americans from the Panama Papers has fed conspiracy theories, such as claims the leak of the files was orchestrated by the CIA to destabilize Russia and other countries.

But Walker Guevara said there is still a lot to be examined in the trove of 11.5 million documents that make up the Panama Papers, and there could be more about Americans in there.

"It's a huge trove of documents and maybe there's something hiding there that we haven't found yet. It's a work in progress."

"@USTreasury has taken new action to prevent more corporations from taking advantage of one of the most insidious tax loopholes" —@POTUS

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 5, 2016

Related Articles:

President Obama Just Took a Major Step in Response to the Panama Papers
Switzerland, Singapore join clampdown on bank secrecy (Update)

President Obama Just Took a Major Step in Response to the Panama Papers

U.S. Uncut, Rosette Newcomb, April 5, 2016

President Obama has ordered the U.S. Department of the Treasury to stop corporate tax inversions following the release of the Panama Papers.

"@USTreasury has taken new action to prevent more corporations from taking advantage of one of the most insidious tax loopholes" —@POTUS

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 5, 2016

Inversion is one of the multiple corporate tax loopholes companies exploit to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Under inversion, an American company acquires a foreign competitor, then re-registers in the home country or territory of that competitor to get around American tax laws. The new rules enacted by the Treasury Department will put a cap on new foreign acquisitions of U.S. assets to skirt ownership requirements for potential inversions in the future.

“When politicians perpetuate a system that favors the wealthy over the middle class, its not surprising that people feel like they cant get ahead,” President Obama said on Tuesday morning. “Rather than doubling down on policies that let a few big corporations and wealthy people make their own rules, we should build an economy that gives everyone a fair shot.”

The Treasury Department’s new rules could completely derail the proposed $150 billion merger between pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Irish-based Allergan, along with other proposed corporate inversions. The New York Times described the new rules, outlined in a 300-page document, as “thorough and, if not exhaustive, exhausting.” Obama praised the Treasury Department’s latest moves, but called on Congress to pass legislation permanently ending the corporate inversion loophole.

“Only Congress can close it for good,” Obama said.

Obama’s move comes on the heels of the historic Panama Papers leak and the subsequent resignation of Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who was found to have used a shell corporation to hide assets overseas.

Iceland’s prime minister was the first of what could be many world leaders to face accountability in response to the Panama Papers. Gunnlaugsson, in particular, was found to have holdings in the British Virgin Islands, some of which included his own country’s debt. The Panama Papers revealed him to be an officer of Wintris, Inc., which is registered in the European tax haven of Luxembourg. Wintris is a shell company set up by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca specifically for the Icelandic Prime Minister’s tax evasion.

Watch archived video of President Obama’s statement below (statement begins at the 30 minute mark):

Related Articles:

Iceland premier resigns in Panama Papers scandal
'Panama Papers' law firm under the media's lenses

Switzerland, Singapore join clampdown on bank secrecy (Update)

Offshore Secrets

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EU, Switzerland sign tax info exchange deal - New
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Commentary: OECD tax agreement - a little more justice

Ireland to close ‘double Irish’ tax loophole

G20 countries agree to exchange tax information to stamp out evasion

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Singapore and US reach tax evasion deal

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Offshore tax evaders targeted with new ad campaign of warnings

New asset declaration rules linked to China's anti-graft efforts

The Netherlands and US agree tax information exchange

Cayman Islands and Costa Rica agree to share bank account details with US Liechtenstein ends banking secrecy, accepts OECD tax rules

G20 to share tax information by 2015

China joins anti-tax evasion convention

Dutch polish tax image, to 'update' treaties with 23 poor countries

G20 backs plan to stop global tax avoidance and evasion

G8 leaders agree tax evasion measures

Indonesia Welcomes Tax Haven Transparency

British PM strikes 'tax havens' deal ahead of G8

Andorra to introduce income tax for first time

Swiss strike bank deal with US over tax evasion

Singapore Boosts Measures Against Global Tax Cheats

Bermuda and UK territories sign anti-tax evasion deal

Austria to loosen bank secrecy laws within weeks

Luxembourg to ease the secrecy surrounding its banks

Australia to force multinationals to disclose tax arrangements

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G20 urges global community to end banking secrecy

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Dutch MPs call for action on tax havens, plan should be ready by summer

EU deal to tackle mining corruption

French ministers to declare assets publicly

------------------------------------------   Africa  --------------------------------------------

The Netherlands to pay tax on development aid - New

Dutch polish tax image, to 'update' treaties with 23 poor countries

Dutch agree new tax deal with Malawi, aim to stop tax avoidance

Africa losing billions from fraud and tax avoidance

--------------------------------------------- Asia -----------------------------------------------

China Offshore Secrets

Modi Gives Last Chance for India Tax Evaders in $2 Trillion Hunt

New US taxact will help China anti-graft campaign

Asian logging companies 'use British islands for tax dodging'

Wealthy in China need new tax haven as Switzerland U-turns on banking privacy

Offshore tax-dodging piece shows anti-Chinese bias: report

Chinese oil giants make use of offshore shell companies in Caribbean

China's cash haven in the British Virgin islands – the key points

China's princelings storing riches in Caribbean offshore haven


-----------------------------------   South America  --------------------------------------

Panama Papers' law firm under the media's lenses - New

Coveted and criticized, Latin America's rich multiply

------------------------------------------   Europe  --------------------------------------------

EU Offshore Secrets

EU launches new tax avoidance push - New

Dutch tax office tracks foreign bank card payments in hunt for illicit savings

UK companies aiding tax evaders will be criminally liable
HSBC may shut Jersey accounts of UK residents

Greece seeks to plug its 'Bermuda Triangle' of lost taxes

British property 'safe haven' for corrupt cash: campaigners

UBS Whistle-Blower Says Bank Has ‘Global’ Issue With Tax Evaders

HSBC bank 'helped clients dodge millions in tax'

Belgium’s big business tax breaks drawn into EU tax avoidance probe

World unites to decry prosecution of source behind LuxLeaks tax scandal

Luxembourg tax files: how tiny state rubber-stamped tax avoidance on an industrial scale

Offshore tax dealings: celebrities and sportsmen in leaked Jersey files

EU launches investigation into Apple, Starbucks and Fiat tax deals

Swiss bank accused of helping clients evade US taxes

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Dutch finance ministry denies Starbucks tax secrecy claims

100 of UK's richest people concealing billions in offshore tax havens

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The nation at the heart of the offshore scandal: Britain

Leaks reveal secrets of the rich who hide cash offshore

Climate aid from rich nations at $62 bn in 2014: report

Yahoo – AFP, Marlowe Hood, October 7, 2015

An Indian worker walks past lines of solar panels at Roha Dyechem solar plant in the

western Indian state of Rajasthan on August 23, 2015 (AFP Photo/Money Sharma)

Rich nations have stepped up their climate aid for poorer nations, paying $62 billion (55 billion euros) last year, approaching a $100-billion annual target for 2020, the OECD said Wednesday.

Up from $52 billion in 2013, the figure represented "significant progress towards the $100-billion goal", said a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an intergovernmental research body.

The new numbers will provide fodder for finance ministers and central bank chiefs meeting in Lima, Peru this week, where climate change is high on the agenda.

Street lamps powered by wind and solar

 energy line the side of a road in Kenya

on August 19, 2015 (AFP Photo/Tony

Karumba)

Cash flows from rich countries -- both public and private -- are a make-or-break component of the 195-nation UN climate talks tasked with delivering a comprehensive carbon-cutting pact in December.

"We've come up with a figure that we do think is credible," said Simon Buckle, who oversaw the drafting of the report, the first attempt to pull together all the available numbers.

Requested by governments, the analysis lays out a much-needed framework for tracking how money earmarked for climate action moves between countries, development banks and private sources, the authors said.

Up to now the lack of clarity on whether money was public or private, in the form of grants or loans, or earmarked for greenhouse gas reduction or bracing for climate impacts, has blocked progress in the UN climate negotiations.

Developing nations, which have made finance a red-line issue, are wary of double-counting and the inclusion of non-climate projects in the final tally.

"The report provides transparency by breaking down the aggregate estimate of climate finance into its main financial elements," the report said.

NGOs and analysts reacted with caution.

The report, they said, is encouraging but unlikely to satisfy poor nations looking for hard assurances.

The promise to pony up at least $100 billion in climate aid per year from 2020 was one of the few concrete decisions to emerge from the troubled 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

Another was the goal of capping average planet warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above mid-19th century levels.

The OECD analysis does not make projections to 2020.

"The positive signal is that climate finance flows are on a upward trajectory," said Athena Ronquillo-Ballesteros of the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based think-tank. "Countries still have time to step up."

'Peanuts'

More than 70 percent of the total for 2014 came from the public sector -- $20.4 billion from multilateral sources such as development banks, and $23.1 billion from bilateral sources, mainly grants and loans from one government to another.

"We were pleasantly surprised to see that the lion's share of the number is actually public finances," said Jens Mattias Clausen, a climate finance analyst with Greenpeace.

Most developing countries insist that the bulk of the promised money should be from public and government funds.

The report also offers the first estimated breakdown of money for both mitigation, or greenhouse gas reduction, and adaptation -- preparing for the droughts, superstorms and water shortages which scientists say will be aggravated by global warming.

More than three-quarters of the money went to mitigation, a fact which is likely to upset poor nations demanding more cash to help them prepare for these impacts.

An egret looks for food on cracked mud at the bottom of a dried up reservoir in

Pingdingshan, central China's Henan province on July 30, 2014 (AFP Photo)

"This is a far cry from what developing nations are expecting," said Clausen.

While the $62 billion is seen as encouraging, experts cautioned that there's still a big gap to fill before reaching the 2020 goal.

There is also the question of what happens after that.

"The report doesn't address the fact that the $100-billion figure itself is inadequate," said Alden Meyer, a veteran climate policy analyst with the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists.

"Nor does it address how to assure that climate finance ramps up well beyond $100 billion a year after 2020," he said by email.

Also left unmentioned is the hugely contentious issue of payouts for damages -- past and future -- caused by global warming.

Money for "loss and damage", as it is called, would be over and above what is already pledged.

"A hundred billion dollars is peanuts when you look at what will actually be needed," Clausen said.