Brussels, 21/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - In April of this year, the European Commission is to propose that businesses with a net consolidated turnover of more than €750 million publish a series of accounting information broken down by country for all EU member states and “on an aggregated basis” for the tax authorities outside the EU, according to a source close to the dossier.
This proposal for what is known in the jargon as 'country-by-country reporting' will be presented in the form of amendments to the accounting standards Directive (2013/34/EU) and credit institutions subject to reporting under the CRDIV directive will be exempted from it. The companies in question will have to publish a description of the nature of their activities, staff numbers, net turnover, pre-tax profits or losses, the amount of tax to be paid and the amount of tax paid.
For multinationals established in third countries, the obligation will affect branches and subsidiaries inside the EU.
In early March, a number of NGOs wrote to the Commissioner in charge of the dossier, Jonathan Hill, to express concerns at the fact that the proposal would put businesses under the obligation of country-by-country reporting only for the EU whilst making a broad-based declaration outside the EU. Civil society argues that the whole purpose of the legislation would be watered down by making it impossible to tell whether the companies are using tax havens outside the EU. In order to explain its decision, the Commission stressed that there could be concerns regarding rising numbers of dual taxation issues. On Monday 21 March, appearing before the special TAXE committee of the European Parliament, representatives of the banks ING and Crédit Agricole explained that they had not yet seen issues of tax disputes emerging since implementing the reporting in the framework of the CRDIV directive. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)