Multinational companies do not publicly report on where they are making their money or what taxes they are paying to whom. Investors, policymakers, and citizens have no idea exactly how they are gaming the system—what they tell us versus what they tell other countries. They should have to write it down in one place and report it on a country-by-country basis, so that the public, policymakers, and shareholders can see what they are really paying.
A group of investors representing more than $1 trillion assets under management signed a letter to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, urging FASB to reconsider the Exposure Draft and support country-by-country reporting.
On May 7th and 8th, 2019, AFSCME, the Emerging Markets Investors Alliance, the FACT Coalition, Oxfam, and the Transparency & Accountability Initiative hosted a webinar on the harms of inadequate disclosures of corporate tax practices. Moderated by Gary Kalman, Executive Director of FACT Coalition, the webinar featured an expert panel that included, Ty Gellasch, founder of Myrtle Makena and former Senior Counsel to the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations, Nicholas Lusiani, Senior Advisor at Oxfam America, Robert M. Wilson, Jr., investment officer and research analyst at MFS Investment Management, and Richard Phillips, former senior policy analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senate lawmakers introduced two pieces of legislation on Wednesday that would boost transparency of multinational corporations’ tax and employment practices while making it harder for companies to game the international tax system.
Investors, Businesses, and Policymakers Increasingly Take Steps Toward Public Country-by-Country Reporting of Tax Information
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Public disclosure of multinational corporations’ disaggregated profits and taxes is steadily progressing toward a global norm as investors, businesses, and policymakers have increasingly taken steps toward transparency, according to a new study published Tuesday by the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition.
There is a growing chorus of individuals and organizations speaking out on the value of tax transparency and, in particular, the public country-by-country reporting (CBCR) of certain financial information for multinational companies, according to this April 2019 report published by the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition (FACT Coalition).
Titled “Trending Toward Transparency: The Rise of Public Country-by-Country Reporting,” the report highlights the growing support among various sectors of the investing, business, and policymaking communities as well as several enacted and proposed rules around the world to mandate increased disclosures.
On Tax Day 2019, the first year of data on corporate taxes under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) are coming in. Those who championed the corporate reforms promised, among other benefits, that the changes would end the offshore shell games by multinationals, profits stashed in tax havens would return to the U.S., and the new competitive rate would attract a flood of foreign direct investment.
Opponents of the new law, like the FACT Coalition and our members, argued that the incentives would have the opposite effect: the offshoring of profits would continue and the incentives might well create new (unhelpful) distortions influencing corporate behavior.
It is now time to look at what actually happened. To get a better sense of the impact, consider the following recent excerpts from various news reports and analysis by tax experts.
