Labour MP Caroline Flint, a member of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), has been successful in introducing an amendment to the Finance Bill which would require multinationals to make public their country by country reporting (CBCR) for the first time
Amendment 145, which was put forward by Flint and supported by more than 60 MPs, and related to CBCR of taxes paid by multinational corporations, was approved without a division in the House of Commons on Monday 5 September.
The bill is currently at its third reading in the Commons and will then be scrutinised by the Lords, at which point some of the measures, including public CBCR, could still be challenged.
The amendment proposes that that multinationals based in the UK or with a large presence there should make public information about the size of their profits, where they were made and what taxes they paid.
While this information has been supplied by multinationals to HMRC previously it has not been publicly available.
Flint said: ‘Today is a victory for fairer taxation. A victory for openness, and a clear message to those global corporations that shift profits to low tax havens, that we expect them to play by the same rules as every other business.’
