EP report: Developing countries lose USD 189 bln annually due to tax evasion

BRUSSELS, June 1 (KUNA) ¬¬ The European Parliament’s Development Committee Monday called on companies in all countries to adopt country¬by¬country reporting and make all information public in order to fight tax evasion and illicit money flows in developing countries.

The committee in a resolution also called on the EU’s financial institutions to ensure that companies receiving EU support do not participate in tax evasion and avoidance.

The committee said that listed and unlisted multinational companies must publish as part of their annual report, on a country¬by¬country basis for each territory in which they operate, the names of all subsidiaries, their financial performance, relevant tax information, assets and number of employees, and to ensure that this information is publicly available.

It called on the European Commission, the executive body of the 28¬member EU, to put forward an ambitious action plan without delay to support developing countries in fighting tax evasion and tax avoidance and in setting up fair, well¬balanced, efficient and transparent tax systems.

Tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions that allow banking or financial information to be kept private, combined with ‘zero¬tax’ regimes to attract capital and revenues that should have been taxed in other countries, , undermine the fairness of the tax system and distort trade and investment, particularly affecting developing countries, with a
loss of an estimated USD 189 billion of tax revenue annually, noted an EP statement.