Financial Transparency Coalition

This report is part of an initiative to create a comprehensive, and globally representative series of country reports that touch on diverse tax justice issues. The production of this report is the collective effort of all of the organisations involved. The Tax Justice Network promotes transparency in international finance and opposes secrecy. TJN was initiated at in 2002, and is dedicated to high-level research, analysis and advocacy in the field of tax and regulation. Tax Justice Network Africa was launched in 2007 with the aim of bringing tax issues to the foreground of the broader development agenda. We work to...

The European Commission released a proposal for country-by-country reporting on 25 October, this will help to address corruption surrounding extractive industries and logging. However this will not address the larger problem of tax dodging which is prevalent in these industries and widespread in all other sectors. European parliamentarians and member states could improve the proposal so that tax issues in all sectors are covered.

In July 2010, the U.S. Congress passed Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act, a measure requiring companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to publicly report how much they pay governments for access to oil, gas and minerals, country-by-country and project-by-project. The SEC is developing final rules to put the disclosure requirement into effect. In October 2011, the European Commission issued draft directives requiring companies listed on EU stock exchanges and large private companies based in member states to disclose their payments to governments for oil, gas, minerals and timber, country-by-country and per project. After developing a final...

LONDON - The European Commission took a vital step on Tuesday towards helping millions of people in poor countries to benefit from their natural resources by proposing legislation requiring EU-based oil, gas, mining and timber companies to publicly disclose their payments to governments for each project that they invest in around the world.