Brussels, 26/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 26 April, the committee on economic and monetary affairs of the European Parliament adopted, by 45 votes in favour and 11 abstentions, the report by Polish member Dariusz Rosati (EPP) on the automatic exchange of information on country-by-country tax transparency (reporting), which, amongst other things, calls for the European Commission to have access to the information exchanged.
This concerns the confidential version of the country-by-country reports that companies with a turnover of €750 million or more must provide to the tax administrations, which will then exchange them amongst themselves. The attempts of several groups to make this information public have therefore been rejected by most of the MEPs. “We must not jeopardise European companies' competitiveness by asking them to disclose information that American and Chinese companies do not have to disclose”, said Rosati.
Making the Commission central to the exchange is the main amendment made to the initial proposal. The MEPs according to this change in order to allow the Commission to make sure that State aid rules are being complied with. The S&D, GUE/NGL and Greens/EFA group went further and called for the turnover threshold to be reduced in order to include more businesses, but this change was not adopted. The text also provides for sanctions for companies which do not notify their country-by-country reports. The Council also brought in a similar provision (see EUROPE 11507).
The text has already been approved by the Council, in March of this year. At the time, the EP was up in arms as the member states did not wait for its opinion on the dossier (see EUROPE 11503 and 11512). (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)