A critical battle is currently being waged in the international tax policy arena over the implementation of country by country reporting, a reporting process that deters and detects tax avoidance by multinational companies, among other things, by requiring companies to provide a global picture of … [Read more...]
Country by Country
Accounting for influence: how the Big Four are embedded in EU tax avoidance policy
The Corporate Europe Observatory has a report out today which is well worth reading. We've written and commented extensively on the Big Four accountancy firms and the damage they do, you can read more in our 'enablers and intermediaries' section. As our CEO Alex Cobham has said, they're "not the … [Read more...]
Video discussion: ‘Taming Digital Capitalism’ through public country by country reporting
There were some important debates in Brussels recently where Hans Böckler Stiftung held a two-day symposium with the European Trade Union Institute looking at the changes citizens in Europe are facing in the workplace and examining the challenges for the new leaders who will be in place as a result … [Read more...]
Video: discussion on tax revenue losses, Apple’s tax avoidance and ‘state aid’
We're sharing here the opening panel discussion of the June 2017 European Financial Congress, Eastern Europe's largest finance congress in Gdansk, Poland. The theme of the panel was "Tax solidarity in the world and in the EU" and it features visiting Professor at Oxford University Philip Baker QC … [Read more...]
The B-Team: Lowering the bar for tax transparency?
The B Team, the leading global group for responsible business, has released a report: 'A New Bar for Responsible Tax'. To our great sadness, it moves the bar in one direction - towards the bottom. When the B Team first got in touch to discuss their plan to work with major multinationals to … [Read more...]
Open data for tax justice – designing a new CbCR database
This week, TJN participated in a design sprint in London organised by Open Knowledge International. The purpose of the sprint was to bring together coders and tax justice advocates to start work on building a database for the new country by country reporting data that we hope will be released in … [Read more...]
RB tax avoidance – company calls for public country by country reporting after Oxfam report reveals profit shifting
Oxfam has today released a report on tax dodging by RB, the company formerly known as Reckitt Benckiser and the maker of thousands of well known household products. The report looks at the 2012 restructuring of the company which saw it set up ‘hubs’ in the Netherlands, Dubai and Singapore, all … [Read more...]
EU Parliament multinational transparency vote introduces ‘commercial confidentiality’ loophole
Yesterday the European Parliament held a crucial tax justice vote on making multinational companies with an annual net turnover of 750 million euros and above publicly report their activities, structures and tax payments on a country-by-country basis. That would mean no more secrecy around those … [Read more...]
Public country-by-country reporting: it’s not about costs or trade secrets
A guest blog authored by Matti Ylonen [University of Helsinki and Aalto University Business School]. The European Parliament is currently debating a proposal for public country-by-country reporting (CBCR), and the vote was recently postponed to later in June. Under the original proposal of the … [Read more...]
Developing countries’ access to CbCR: Guess who’s (not) coming to OECD dinner
It's said that if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. Well, the OECD has just made available the list of activated relationships to automatically exchange country-by-country reports between countries. They use big figures like 700 relationships, but don’t get fooled by those numbers - … [Read more...]
Do you want to know how much tax multinational companies pay?
Yes, so would we... And now there's an action today on twitter which we can all take to help this become reality. All EU banks have been obliged to report their profits and tax paid on a country by country basis since 2015. And not just to tax authorities behind closed doors, but publicly. Because … [Read more...]
Estimating tax avoidance: New findings, new questions
By Alex Cobham There are now a range of estimates of the global scale of tax avoidance. These include: the $600 billion annual tax loss estimated by IMF researchers Crivelli et al. (2015; 2016), which divides roughly into $400 billion of OECD losses and $200 billion elsewhere; the $100 … [Read more...]
The OECD – penalising developing countries for trying to tackle tax avoidance
The OECD’s new terms of reference to assess the implementation by countries of BEPS Action 13 related to Country-by-Country Reports (CbCR) may penalise countries, especially developing ones, that try to obtain by their own means the CbCR’s valuable data needed to tackle multinational tax … [Read more...]
Open Data For Tax Justice: the creation of a public database of country-by-country reporting data
How much tax do multinational companies pay in your country? Leading tax justice campaigners (including the Tax Justice Network) and open data specialists are working on helping you find out with their open data for tax justice project. Today they're publishing a white paper entitled What Do They … [Read more...]
The Netherlands comes out in support of public country-by-country reporting
Here’s some good news. Policy advisor on tax justice and economic inequality at Oxfam Novib, Francis Weyzig writes how the government in the Netherlands has come out in support of public country by country reporting. … [Read more...]
