Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the amendment. Under the internationally agreed approach for country-by-country reporting, the reports filed and shared with the tax authorities must remain confidential. The OECD and other countries involved in agreeing the BEPS report have been clear about it.

The nub of the reason I cannot accept the amendment arises from the fact that if Revenue was to make these reports publicly available, other countries would be entitled to stop exchanging country-by-country reports with Ireland. This would result in a lot less information being made available to our tax authorities, in this case the Revenue Commissioners, and dilute the significant benefit of this important BEPS measure, which I know the Deputy welcomes.

The purpose of country-by-country reporting is to provide Revenue with the information necessary to make informed risk assessments. It will give a clear overview of the global activities of large corporate groups. This will enable Revenue to target audits and interventions by highlighting where there may be particular transfer pricing, something we discussed. Making the reports public would not improve Revenue's ability to carry out this work. Instead, it would actually make it much more difficult as Revenue would not receive, as I said, the country-by-country reports filed with the other tax authorities.

Separate from the OECD proposal for country-by-country reporting to tax authorities which is being introduced in the Finance Bill, which means that this country is implementing this proposal very quickly, the European Commission is examining the issue of public country-by-country reporting. This would require companies to make information about operations, activities and profits in each country in which they operate publicly available, which is something the Deputy would welcome. The Commission recently held, as the Deputy will know, a public consultation on the issue and has commissioned an impact assessment. I and the Minister for Finance await the outcome of the impact assessment, but in any event departmental officials and the Minister will continue to engage actively in the debate on the issue at an EU level while introducing country-by-country reporting to tax authorities as agreed at the OECD as part of the BEPS process.

In general, I and the Minister, Deputy Noonan, believe it is important that a consistent approach is adopted globally to country-by-country reporting. If we do not have a globally consistent approach, we are nearly back to square one. For the reasons I have outlined, I am not in a position to accept the Deputy's amendment.