Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 61

In page 56, line 6, after “year.” to insert “Revenue shall then make this country-by-country report available to the public on their website.”.

We welcome the move towards country-by-country reporting and it leads to an increased level of transparency. However, it is missing public transparency. It is very interesting that the public still is not allowed know what is happening. In England, for example, when it was found out that large multinationals operating there - Google, Starbucks and a number of others - were paying extremely low corporation tax rates, the people of the country became quite annoyed and political pressure on these organisations started to grow. These organisations began to say they had to maintain good public relations with customers, and that they would, therefore, step up to the plate regarding a better corporation tax regime. Society is a powerful leverage with regard to tax justice. If the information is not made public, consumers are not making full decisions on the justice behind the behaviour of these companies. It is not good for the public not to have this power and knowledge. Although we live in an information society, this information is withheld. It neutralises the citizens’ ability to effect change on these companies.

I alluded earlier to the fact that many developing countries feel they are being robbed of tax by the fact that we have bargain basement tax rates here. These countries are not necessarily in the same global tax treaties as we are. Therefore, even though country by country reporting is going to happen, they may not have full access to the information. These are the poorest countries, and they are likely to lose out regarding global taxation rules.

One of my worries is that I do not know how much profit companies such as Tesco make in the State. This is a long-term bugbear of mine. The Revenue understands, and there is a report into Revenue of the profits that are made, and they paid tax on this basis. However, the citizen and the consumer of these large companies are deemed unworthy of full knowledge of their expenditure. The companies operate within this State and tax is an enormous part of the justice of any state. We, as citizens, cannot ascertain whether these companies are fulfilling tax justice.