MEPs approved the measure by 534 votes to 98, with 62 abstentions, however the directive now needs to be approved by the EU member states before it is enacted into national law in each country within a year.

Under the directive, the income tax information from multinational companies with a turnover of €750m (£658m) or more would be published in each tax jurisdiction the company or subsidiary is operating. Currently, they report in one consolidated report.

The data would be available for free and made publicly accessible on the company’s website.

The company would also be responsible for filing a report in a public registry managed by the European Commission.

The information would include:

• the name of the firm and, where applicable, the list of all its subsidiaries, a brief description of the nature of their activities and their respective geographical location;
• the number of employees on a full-time equivalent basis;
• the amount of the net turnover;
• stated capital;
• the amount of profit or loss before income tax;
• the amount of income tax paid during the relevant financial year by the firm and its branches resident for tax purposes in the relevant tax jurisdiction;
• the amount of accumulated earnings; and
• whether undertakings, subsidiaries or branches benefit from a preferential tax treatment.

A previous amendment to the Finance Bill, put forward by Caroline Flint, empowers the Treasury to issue regulations to require that multinationals append to their public tax strategy a country-by-country report, as defined in Action 13 Country-by-country reporting implementation, of the G20/OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project.

If member states agree to the directive public country reporting could start from 1 January 2018 or 2019.