PwC urged Labor to delay multinational tax transparency laws, Senate submissions reveal

The Guardian Australia reveals how PwC, the other big four consultancies and the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia were among the entities that urged the federal government to delay and water down proposed multinational tax transparency laws. Pushing for new rules to follow the flawed approach taken by the EU,

Jason Ward, the principal analyst of the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research, said under EU rules corporate financial information “is aggregated as one useless lump sum” for non-member states.

“It’s no wonder that PwC and its multinational clients are pushing Australia towards alignment with the European Union’s weak and flawed approach to public country-by-country reporting,” he said.

“This does not expose rampant multinational profit shifting. It merely encourages …the existing schemes to be moved from Luxembourg and Ireland to Switzerland, Singapore or dozens of other jurisdictions.”

Ward said “intense corporate lobbying … is a clear demonstration that multinationals want to keep the public in the dark”. “What is so secret about basic financial information on a country-by-country basis?”