The European Parliament is aiming high for country-by-country tax transparency. In the draft report by Socialists Hugues Bayet (Belgium) and Evelyn Regner (Austria), which will on Wednesday 1 February be put before the MEPs of the two committees that are competent on this dossier and of which we have had sight, the position adopted by the MEPs ultimately comes as no surprise.
No surprise, as Parliament has had several opportunities publicly to adopt a position on this dossier, in resolutions or in the framework of negotiations on the revision of the directive on shareholders' rights, in which Parliament initially attempted to include country-by-country tax transparency.
Readers may recall that this measure was proposed by the European Commission in April of last year, in the form of amendments to the directive on accounting standards.
The Commission proposed requiring major groups (with a turnover of €750 million and above) to publish certain accounting information (such as turnover and tax paid) on a country-by-country basis for the EU and countries on the future European list of tax havens, and the same information in aggregated form, in other words global, for the rest of the world.
Parliament proposed reducing the minimum turnover to €40 million and for the information to be published on a country-by-country basis for the entire world.
To the list of information required from businesses, they add public subsidies received. Multinationals would not just have to publish the number of employees, but also the number of people working on a full-time equivalent basis. Lastly, the MEPs are calling for multinationals also to publish this information in a public register to be managed by the European Commission.
The draft report will be the subject of negotiations between the political groups in Parliament. It will be discussed at the end of February, with a view to a vote in plenary in July. The member states will return to this dossier to take stock on 29 March. At this stage, they have not yet been called upon to decide on the legal base. Readers may recall that at least 12 member states are calling for the text to be negotiated as a taxation text- this would require unanimity in the Council with the European Parliament simply consulted (see EUROPE 11667 and 11689). (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)