Financial Transparency Coalition

Tax Research UK

A May 2010 briefing from Tax Research UK (prepared by Richard Murphy) explains the benefits of an international country-by-country reporting standard.

In short, the briefing explains that country-by-country reporting would:

• Provide a stakeholder view of accounting;
• Create reporting of results by country, without exception, which has previously been unknown;
• Provide a new view of corporate structures;
• Impart a new understanding of what the business of a corporation is, and where it is;
• Opens up a new perspective on world trade because intra-group transactions would be reported for the first time in multinational company accounts;
• Give a new view of world labour markets;
• Create an entirely new tool for geo-political risk profiling of companies;
• Permit better appraisal of corporate contributions to the governments that host their activities and in the process contribute to constraining corruption on the part of some recipient governments;
• Provide better awareness of the true extent of tax haven activity;
• Allow measurement of tax lost through tax planning by corporations through the relocation of profit;
• Provide a better understanding of the physical resource allocation of the corporate world.