Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The effect of the proposed amendments would be to require Revenue to publish the country-by-country reports filed under section 891H of the Tax Consolidation Act 1997. Section 23 of the Bill simply makes minor amendments to country-by-country reporting as introduced last year. These minor amendments are to ensure our legislation is fully consistent with the EU directive agreed after we had already legislated for country-by-country reporting. Under the internationally agreed approach for country-by-country reporting, the reports filed and shared with tax authorities must remain confidential. The OECD and the other countries involved in agreeing the BEPS reports have also been clear on this. If Revenue were to make these reports publicly available, other countries would be entitled to stop exchanging country-by-country reports with Ireland. This would result in much less information being made available to the Revenue Commissioners and dilute the significant benefit of this important BEPS measure.

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 risks. Making the reports public would not improve Revenue's ability to carry out this work. Instead, it would be much more difficult for Revenue to do its work because it would not receive the country-by-country reports filed with other tax authorities. Separately to the OECD's proposals for country-by-country reporting to tax authorities which section 891H relates to, the European Commission has published a proposal for public country-by-country reporting. This would require companies - not the Revenue Commissioners - to make information about operations, activities and profits in each country in which they operate publicly available. This proposal is being discussed by member states and is actively being dealt with by my colleague, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. Ireland is actively in engaging in this work.

Amendment No. 83 would impose an obligation on Revenue to make regulations under the section rather than giving it authority to make regulations. Revenue has already made regulations under this section and they are in force. This amendment merely tweaks Revenue's power to ensure that minor changes required under the EU directive on country-by-country reporting can be made to the regulations. I am advised by the Revenue Commissioners that they intend to issue new regulations before the end of the year.

Amendment No. 84 proposes to remove Revenue's ability to make regulations protecting the confidentiality of the information. The amendment is related to amendment No. 109, which involves making the information public. As I have outlined, I do not support it. Preserving the confidentiality of the information is an integral part of the OECD agreement on country-by-country reporting. For these reasons, I am not minded to accept the amendments.

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