Some of the largest multinational companies to be forced to contribute towards government budgets

Bold updates to international tax rules designed to force some of the world's biggest multinationals – including Google, Apple, Amazon, Vodafone and GlaxoSmithKline – to contribute their fair share towards government budgets are to be agreed by G20 countries this weekend.

Under draft rules published on Tuesday by tax experts from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) many of the world's largest and best known corporations face being forced to rapidly dismantle their elaborate cross-border corporate structures.

The moves by governments to corral companies back into a joined-up, modernised network of international tax treaties mark the halfway point in a two-year reform project begun by world leaders in Moscow last summer.

If nerves hold among the 44 countries involved – which together represent 90% of the world's economy – the impact on corporate profits and treasury receipts could be significant in many economies, large and small.

Meanwhile, countries that have courted multinationals with tax-friendly regimes – Bermuda, Ireland and Luxembourg among them – could suffer an investment exodus.

Existing international tax rules, laid down in a network of about 3,000 bilateral tax treaties, have for decades been straining to keep up with innovations in technology and tax avoidance. The OECD has said the G20 reform project is urgently required "to prevent the existing consensus-based international tax framework from unravelling".

Among the initiatives OECD experts claim will have the most impact are new rules to stop companies exploiting differences between tax regimes to conjure up unwarranted tax deductions.

These so-called hybrid mismatch structures are thought to leak billions from treasury coffers around the world each year and are routinely deployed by the world's largest international businesses.

One of the OECD tax experts leading the reform programme, Raffaele Russo, said: "I think with these rules, we really kill them. Time will tell, because you never know how creative people will get, but I think if countries do what these rules require I just don't see how you can do hybrids any more."

Also published in the OECD update are draft rules that will require multinationals to give tax authorities a country-by-country detailed breakdown of their activities and earnings, making it easier for nations to detect patterns of avoidance.

At the same time G20 finance minsters will receive OECD draft rules designed to stamp out so-called treaty shopping. In the past, favourable treaty arrangements have seen, for example, up to 40% of overseas investment in India channelled through Mauritius first.

Among the most contentious issues, however, remains how to treat digital companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google that have experienced explosive growth in the last three decades, often developing tax structures as innovative as their products.

The US last year fought off French and Italian efforts for the OECD programme to develop specific rules targeted at computer and internet companies. But all participants in the project have pledged that its second phase, while not singling out the digital sector, must stamp out some of the most egregious behaviour that has thrived in these newer enterprises.

As a result, the likes of Amazon and Google are unlikely to be able to continue to tell tax authorities in Britain and other major European markets that their offshore sales hubs can take billions of pounds of sales without having a taxable presence locally, known in tax jargon as a "permanent establishment".

Further beefing up of existing tax rules over the next 12 months are to make it harder for multinationals to transfer parts of their intellectual property rights to low-tax jurisdictions at modest cost. This could present a challenge to Apple, Google and others.

Russo said: "Have we solved all the problems of the digital economy? I think no. But have we put some clarity in the debate? I think yes."

But the UK chancellor, George Osborne, who two years ago positioned himself as a prominent cheerleader for the project, is this weekend expected to cut an isolated figure as other G20 finance ministers meet in Cairns, Australia, to give formal backing to the OECD's work.

Osborne has angered his peers with Britain's so-called "patent box" tax incentives. These tax breaks are offered by a handful of European countries to businesses that bring with them lucrative intellectual property profits.

The UK has argued they encourage high-tech research and development, others say they are too easy for overseas R&D firms to exploit.

The issue has left the UK increasingly isolated, along with the Netherlands and Luxembourg, in resisting pressure from other nations furious at what they regard as harmful competition.

Elsewhere, early US reticence over the tax reform project appears to have receded a little. Many in Washington still feel that US corporations have been disproportionately cited among the most aggressive abusers of the current international tax rules. But the political mood toward US homegrown multinationals has shifted in recent months.

A rash of so-called "corporate inversion" takeovers – by which US-incorporated groups acquire a rival and transfer their headquarters overseas – has led to angry condemnation from politicians. Such manoeuvres have been criticised as tax-avoidance-driven ploys to keep offshore cash piles beyond the grasp of the US tax authorities.

Barack Obama has described such deals as unpatriotic and has promised new laws to prevent them.

But many tax experts believe the best avenue for bringing multinationals to heel, both within the US and beyond, is via concerted international efforts led by G20 nations.