Average Taxpayers and Small Business Owners Foot the Bill for Offshore Tax Loopholes
Many Large U.S.-Based Multinationals Avoid Paying U.S. Taxes by Using Accounting Tricks to Make Profits Made in America Appear to Be Generated in Offshore Tax Havens—Countries with Minimal or No Taxes.
The FACT Coalition and a broad alliance of other organizations and coalitions submitted comments to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB)—urging the body to require multinational companies to be more transparent about their tax practices.
The FACT Coalition sent a letter to Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and the leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee in support of the Corporate Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016 (H.R.6126).
A Review of Comments to the SEC’s Disclosure Effectiveness Concept Release
The FACT Coalition joined eight other groups—the AFL-CIO; Americans for Financial Reform; the Center for American Progress; Ceres; the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable; Patriotic Millionaires; Public Citizen; and US SIF: The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment—in releasing a report analyzing the more than 26,000 comments received in response to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s April 2016 concept release on “Business and Financial Disclosure Required by Regulation S-K”.
Shareholders Increasingly at Risk from Lack of Disclosure of Corporate Tax Practices
Investors are at an increasing risk due to the lack of information disclosed by companies about their tax practices, according to this September 2016 report published by the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition (FACT Coalition). Titled “A Taxing Problem for Investors: Shareholders Increasingly at Risk from Lack of Disclosure of Corporate Tax Practices,” the report finds that multinational companies have become increasingly reliant on offshore tax avoidance practices to boost short-term earnings in recent years, yet disclosure requirements haven’t kept pace with this changing world. As governments around the globe struggle with growing budget deficits, tax authorities are increasingly cracking down on aggressive tax avoidance practices, which can have a significant impact on shareholder value.
Quotes from prominent law enforcement officials explaining the problems with anonymous shell companies.
