In reaction of the House of Representatives’ adoption of the Disclosure of Tax Havens and Offshoring Act today, a bill that would expose big multinational corporations’ abuse of tax havens, Didier Jacobs, Senior Policy Advisor at Oxfam America, made the following statement:
“The House of Representatives today moved to shine some much-needed light to the shady tax practices of large corporations. Americans are sick and tired of big companies exploiting loopholes to lower their tax bills; they know that ultimately, they are picking up the tab.
“The bill would require large US multinational corporations to provide basic information about all their subsidiaries and a handful of high-level financial data points on a country-by-country basis: revenue, profits, taxes, assets and employees. IRS data shows that in 2018 large US multinational corporations booked almost half of their foreign profits in ten notorious tax havens.
“We are supposed to believe that corporations made five times as much profit in Bermuda as in Mexico, more in the Cayman Islands than in Canada. These accounting tricks are a farce, and if this bill becomes law, we would know which companies abuse the system in this way.”
“We applaud Members of Congress for passing this bill and urge Senator to follow suit.”
Editor’s Notes:
Large multinational corporations already provide data to the IRS, so the bill creates no new reporting burden. The IRS’ role, however, is merely to enforce the law and much of the accounting trickery to shift profits to tax havens is arguably legal. This bill would provide the public data to feed the public understanding and debate to change our tax laws.
The European Union adopted a similar law last month, although requiring only partial disclosure. Last year the Global Reporting Initiative adopted a similar standard against which some socially responsible companies have started to report voluntarily.