EU Demands Tax Transparency from Multinational Corporations

The European Union has reached an agreement on rules that will force global companies to disclose the amount of income and taxes they earn.

The EU demands tax transparency from multinational corporations. European Union (EU) member states and parliamentary negotiators announced that they have agreed on rules that will force large multinational companies to disclose their income and tax amounts. According to the new law with which the EU has agreed, multinational companies with a turnover of more than 750 million euros (916 million dollars) in two consecutive years will be forced to announce their profit, tax and number of employees in EU member states and countries that do not cooperate with the EU on taxation. This bill, first proposed by the European Commission in 2016, was submitted to the Commission in order to prevent large international companies from avoiding taxes. In March 2019, the EU shared a "black list" of 15 countries that did not cooperate in the tax field. In the list that the European Union updated for the last time on February 22, 2021; American Samoa, Anguilla, Dominica, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Panama, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, US Virgin Islands, Vanuatu and Seychelles were included as 12 countries and regions that did not cooperate on taxation. Officials of the international aid organization Oxfam stated that many tax haven countries in the world are not included in the "black list" published by the European Union, therefore companies will avoid scrutiny. Speaking about the decision taken by the EU, Oxfam Tax Expert Chiara Putaturo said, "The EU has given multinational companies many opportunities to shift their earnings to tax haven regions such as Switzerland, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands."