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20 Mar, 2015

Time for transparency for EU multinationals | EurActiv

This week, the European Commission unveiled its tax transparency package, proposing new rules for the exchange of information on secret tax deals and opening up a discussion on whether EU multinationals should publicly report basic information on their activities.

The last decades have seen multinational companies grow ever more powerful and exert huge economic and political influence. The biggest 2000 public multinational companies, of which almost 20% are headquartered in the EU, now have a market value of $44 trillion. At the same time, we continue to know too little about their operations and lack basic information to hold them to account. As a result, it is impossible to know what some of the biggest companies in the world do in the places where they are present. In some cases, people may not even be aware that a multinational is operating in their country. A major shortcoming is the lack of information on how much tax a multinational pays in each country.

Read the rest: Time for transparency for EU multinationals | EurActiv.