On the evening of Monday 27 February, there were no real surprises during the first exchange of views held by the committee on economic and monetary affairs of the European Parliament on the draft Bayet-Regner report on public country-by-country reporting.
The Social Democrat MEPs tasked with drafting the dossier, Belgium's Hugues Bayet and Evelyn Regner of Austria, went as far as possible in the draft report (see EUROPE 11715). The points which were the subject of a debate were those that were expected, particularly the scope of application of the legislative text, the turnovers of the companies concerned and the amount of information to be published in these reports.
Readers may recall that the Commission proposed requiring major groups (those with a turnover of €750 million or more) to publish certain accounting information (such as turnover and tax paid) broken down by country for their activities in the EU and the countries on the future European list of tax havens and to publish the same information in aggregate, in other words overall, form for the rest of the world (see EUROPE 11530).
The Bayet-Regner report proposes reducing the minimum turnover to €40 million and to have the information published on a country-by-country basis for the whole world.
To the list of information required from businesses, the two MEPs have added public subsidies received. Multinationals would not just have to publish the number of employees, but also the number working on a full-time equivalent basis. Lastly, Bayet and Regner call for multinationals also to publish this information in a public register to be managed by the European Commission.
“We still want to answer public demand and fight tax avoidance and evasion and aggressive tax planning, while taking into account the interests of European companies and safeguarding an investment climate”, Burkhard Balz (EPP, Germany) explained, on behalf of Dariusz Rosati (EPP, Poland). “Action 13 of the OECD BEPS action plan should be the basis for further work on tax transparency”, he then stressed, in particular pointing out that the OECD had selected €750 million in turnover as a threshold to identify the companies to be covered.
In one of the most recent versions of the directive on administrative cooperation, in which this OECD action has been included, this threshold has been retained in the Rosati report, Balz went on to explain. The amount of information required is also more consistent, EPP group coordinator also stressed. “I sometimes feel like we're preparing for a sprint when everyone else is going for a walk”, he said ironically.
On the turnover, Rosa Estaràs Ferragut (EPP, Spain) also said that a compromise should be reached somewhere between €40 million and €750 million. Pascal Durand of France (Greens/EFA) pointed out that the threshold of €40 million was the one used to define a major company in the accounting directive, which has been reopened in order to include public country-by-country reporting. An ALDE member also called for a return to the figure of €750 million.
Enrique Calvet Chambon (ALDE, Spain) questioned why the Commission had proposed for businesses to publish only aggregated data for their activities in the rest of the world, with the exception of tax havens. Regner also said that this information should be disaggregated for the rest of the world in order to avoid creating new loopholes that companies might exploit.
It is worth noting that Durand regretted the fact that no sanctions had been provided in the text for businesses not submitting to the publication obligation. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)