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FACT Applauds Australia’s Passage of Groundbreaking New Tax Transparency Requirements for Major Multinationals

Best-In-Class Public Country-by-Country Reporting Requirements Are Expected to Apply to Many Large U.S. Multinationals

WASHINGTON, DC – The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition today applauds the Australian government for its passage of world-leading tax transparency requirements for large multinationals doing business in Australia. Under the new law, many multinationals – including as many as half of all large U.S. multinationals – will begin public country-by-country reporting (CbCR) of tax and other financial information for a range of high-risk jurisdictions typically associated with profit shifting and related tax avoidance schemes.

“With a single stroke, Australia has taken a transformational leap forward for global tax transparency,” said Ian Gary, executive director of the FACT Coalition. “This new law will provide the public with a deep look into the tax and operational practices of many of the world’s largest corporations, some of whom use profit-shifting and other strategies to dodge billions of dollars in taxes every year. This information will be massively useful to policymakers, investors, and other interested parties, and should trigger a domino effect of new tax transparency requirements in other jurisdictions, including the United States.”

“This move will increase transparency and accountability and shine a bright light on where and how multinationals shift profits to avoid the obligation to help fund essential public services and infrastructure around the world,” said Jason Ward, Principal Analyst at the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability & Research (CICTAR) in Australia. “Exposure of current practices will encourage an end to abusive tax schemes everywhere.”

The passage of Australia’s legislation follows years of growing interest in public CbCR from diverse corners, including dozens of high-profile investors that have expressed their need for public tax data to better assess various risks to their portfolios. In numerous rounds of comments submitted to the Australian government on the legislation, FACT has also noted the role that public CbCR plays in arming policymakers with the information necessary to combat offshoring, profit shifting, and other aggressive tax avoidance practices.

“With Australia setting the bar on multinational tax transparency, the U.S. can now either step up and show leadership in this important arena, or continue to fall behind the global trend,” said FACT policy director Zorka Milin. “As many U.S. companies prepare to begin reporting under Australia’s new law, we must ensure that all major multinationals are playing by the same set of rules. Only full, public disclosures covering every jurisdiction will serve to level the playing field and meet a new global standard of transparency, to the benefit of investors, policymakers, governments, and honest taxpayers around the world.”

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Notes to the Editor: 

  • Text of Australia’s new public country-by-country reporting legislation can be found here. 
  • Recent analysis by the EU Tax Observatory indicates that about half of large U.S.-headquartered multinationals are expected to be captured under Australia’s new tax reporting requirements. The majority of all large multinationals headquartered in Bermuda, Singapore, and Switzerland are also expected to be covered under the law.
  • Information required to be reported under the new Australian law largely conforms to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 207-4 tax standard, under which a number of major multinationals such as Shell, BHP, Hess, Vodafone, and Lush already voluntarily publish public country-by-country reports. This information includes a country-by-country breakdown of revenues, income, employee counts, and other categories of information critical towards evaluating the global tax and operational practices of a given multinational.
  • FACT has offered multiple rounds of comments on Australia’s country-by-country reporting measure since the first draft was introduced in 2022. These comments can be found below:
    • September 2022 comments on the Australian Treasury’s Consultation on Multinational Tax Integrity and Tax Transparency.
    • April 2023 comments on the Treasury’s Consultation on Draft Amendments Regarding Public Country-by-Country Reporting.
    • March 2024 comments on the Treasury’s revised Public Country-by-Country Reporting Legislation.
    • June 2024 comments to the Australian Senate Economics Legislation Committee on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Responsible Buy Now Pay Later and Other Measures) Bill 2024.
  • In July, FACT filed a petition with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on behalf of 87 investors with more than $2.3 trillion in assets under management calling for the introduction of similar requirements for U.S.-listed companies.
  • Last year, FACT member Oxfam America released new statistics demonstrating support for public CbCR from investors with more than $10 trillion in assets under management.
  • A bill that would direct the Securities and Exchange Commission to require public CbCR for large U.S. multinational filers (S. 638) was reintroduced last March by Senator Chris Van Hollen. A companion House bill (H.R. 4938) was introduced by Rep. Pettersen in July 2023.