Financial Transparency Coalition

My report for the TUC on corporate taxation in the UK, published today, highlights an issue not picked up by the press, but for me of some considerable significance. That is the decline of corporate reporting for activities in the UK – less than 20% of the largest companies in the UK now reporting in this way compared to 50% a decade ago. As I note in that report:

In 2000, half the sample of companies surveyed published information in their published accounts on their results arising in the UK. Usually this separate...

IKEA is a private company. It does not need to publish an annual financial statement ion the form as a quoted multinational corporation. And it doesn’t. But it has (I think for the first time) published a limited annual report. That’s the good news. The bad news is it does not tell us much. This is the profit and loss account:

Christian Aid is launching a new phase of its Trace the Tax campaign for greater financial transparency by multinational companies. The charity is asking supporters to help persuade four firms to back its call for accounting reforms which will help poor countries collect more of the tax billions which are rightfully theirs. All four have assets and subsidiaries in developing countries. They are: Vodafone, Unilever, TUI Travel (which owns Thomson and First Choice) and Intercontinental Hotels Group (which owns Holiday Inn). Helen Collinson, Campaigns Manager at Christian Aid said: ‘We are appealing to these companies to support our campaign for greater tax...

On the International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB’s) website, many CSOs including Eurodad have contributed to the IASB Discussion Paper on extractive activities, arguing in favor of a comprehensive country by country reporting standard for the extractive industries, a standard currently being reviewed. There are also contributions from other stakeholders that are openly opposed to such a standard. Interestingly, the World Bank also made a very assertive contribution, which strongly supports a country by country reporting standard in the extractive sector. World Bank strongly backs PWYP Proposals on country by country reporting The entire submission from the World Bank...