The Asian Development Bank (ADB) launched the Asia Pacific Tax Hub on domestic resource mobilization and international tax cooperation in 2021. The stated objective under “international tax cooperation” is to promote tax initiatives of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of mostly high-income countries.

This explicit design and rationale of the Asia Pacific Tax Hub is extremely concerning considering the long history of criticism by developing countries, including in Asia, of OECD tax standards being biased and unfair.

Several Asian countries are not part of these OECD forums. For instance, the ADB notes that 26 of the 46 ADB developing members are not part of the OECD BEPS Inclusive Framework. (BEPS stands for “base erosion and profit shifting.”)

Asian civil-society organizations have criticized this ADB tax hub for being created without broad public consultation in the region and expressed concerns that it will reinforce the gross power imbalances in decision-making around global tax rules.

Rather than address the global constraints to domestic resource mobilization, the ADB tax hub will only reinforce the current problematic power dynamics in the international tax architecture dominated by OECD countries’ interests. It also raises important questions on how regional cooperation gets defined in Asia, and in whose interest.