HO CHI MINH CITY — In high-level meetings between Samsung executives and Vietnamese officials over the last month or so, discussions over perennial issues like supply chain worries have taken a back seat to a fresher concern for the electronics giant: the murky outlook for the kind of tax breaks that helped lure it to the Southeast Asian country.
That comes in the wake of an agreement reached by Hanoi and more than 130 other governments to combat a “race to the bottom” in which countries have been vying for investors through ever-lower tax rates. The deal was brokered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and will set a minimum corporate tax rate of 15%, with Group of 20 chair India wanting details to be finalized by July.