PARIS: Global efforts to impose a unified tax policy on Google, Facebook and other internet giants have cleared a major hurdle ahead of a G20 summit in Japan, officials said on Friday.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said that 129 countries had signed off on a roadmap to grab a fairer tax share of the companies’ booming sales.

“Important progress has been made through the adoption of this new programme of work, but there is still a tremendous amount of work to do as we seek to reach, by the end of 2020, a unified long-term solution to the tax challenges posed by digitalisation of the economy,” OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria said in a statement.

The OECD said Gurria would seek the blessing of G20 finance ministers for the roadmap when they meet in the Japanese city of Fukuoka on June 8-9.

That meeting is in preparation for a full G20 summit involving US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and their peers in Osaka at the end of June.

The summit will be an important staging post on the way to the OECD’s goal of agreeing the new tax policy by the end of next year.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2019