"The only people who really have choices are politicians who set the tax rates," said Matt Brittin, a Google executive, during one of those entertaining but frustrating sessions of the public accounts committee last year.

The entertainment lay in the hearing committee chair, Margaret Hodge, say Google does evil on tax and declare a personal boycott of Amazon. The frustration was that Brittin had a point: companies operate via rules set by politicians, even if the likes of HMRC are lenient policemen.

So here's the politicians' response – proposals to the G20 to make deep changes to the international tax regime with the aim of closing loopholes and increasing transparency. Ideas on how to redefine "permanent establishments," an Amazon favourite, will follow.

There's a big difference between proposals and actual reforms, of course. And – surprise surprise – many countries see chancellor George Osborne's beloved "patent box" for pharmaceutical firms as part of the problem.

But the pragmatic point is that international cooperation is the only way to combat multinationals' aggressive tax wheezes. The report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation offers the best hope in years that the tide may turn.