Dr. Brian Keegan:

If one is sitting in a Revenue office in Dublin and a company submits a set of accounts, and all that is available is a company's profit, expenses and its net chargeable amount of tax and the amount of tax it pays, one is just getting a snapshot of one activity and does not necessarily have an overview of where that activity fits in a broader international context. One would probably know where the company is headquartered but not necessarily if it has other subsidiaries or fellow group companies in different territories. The notion behind country-by-country reporting is that the revenue authority would get an overview of all the companies in that group which are subject to common ownership, where they are operating and how much tax they are paying in each individual territory. A revenue authority, whether in Ireland or wherever else, is not looking at a company's affairs in isolation and can form a better overall picture of what is at issue.