CICTAR and allies take position on proposed tax transparency legislation in Australia

The Tax Justice Network Australia (TJN-Aus), the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR), Australian Nursing & Midwifery Federation (ANMF), United Workers Union (UWU), Public Services International (PSI), Community & Public Sector Union-PSU Group (CPSU-PSU Group) have provided the Australian Governmet with a shared submission on crucial draft legislation to implement public country-by-country reporting.

The group note that ensuring that all multinationals pay appropriate levels of taxation in Australia is essential to increase the funding available for the growing costs of health, aged care, and other essential public services.

They express disappointment that (unlike a previous draft) the legislation does not require full pCbCR (only requiring reporting on Australia and a list of specified jurisdictions). However, they commend language, which encouraging companies to adopt full pCbCR rather than reporting on the rest of the world as an aggregate figure. The group has made several previous submissions to Treasury and to Parliament with regards to the benefits of implementing full public Country-by-Country Reporting (pCbCR) following GRI 207 and did not reiterate those arguments again, but instead offered some minor and common-sense amendments for improvement of the proposed legislation.

Adoption of the proposed improvements would help Australia to push forward the inevitable global trend towards greater tax transparency for multinationals and a fairer global tax system for everyone

The full subission can be read HERE