As the Guardian reports this morning:
The world's second-largest beer company, SABMiller, is avoiding millions of pounds of tax in India and the African countries where it makes and sells beer by routing profits through a web of tax-haven subsidiaries, according to a report published by ActionAid today.
The company, whose brands include Grolsch, Peroni and Miller, and African beers Castle and Stone Lager, is accused by the development charity of siphoning profits out of developing countries and parking them offshore.
Of course, country-by-country reporting would largely resolve this issue by removing the opacity behind which this abuse con take place. Action Aid rightly say that in their report.
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“removing the opacity”
Things can’t be that opaque given the detail in the report. In fact it seems a stunning amount of detail about the structure has been found I assume from publically available documents.
@Noel Scoper
Not enough to explain where the tax goes though….
Surely country-by-country reporting is just filling a perceived information gap that could be filled quite easily by the “host countries” legislating that such information you refer to be made available to the host country.
If there isn’t the desire to demand such information by host countries, just how will CbC reporting have any affect on the the tax charge levied by the host country.
For example, lets presume that massive transfer pricing and thin capitalization abuse (according to EU or US standards lets say) is occurring. What exactly will CbC reporting do in the absence of TP and TC legislation or regulation.
[…] Brooks (who is behind the Vodafone tax story, and very much more that is well worthwhile) is co-author of the ActionAd report on SAB MIller I mentioned yesterday. It’s that fact that gives me confidence in the report. And […]
[…] Brooks (who is behind the Vodafone tax story, and very much more that is well worthwhile) is co-author of the ActionAd report on SAB MIller I mentioned yesterday. It’s that fact that gives me confidence in the report. And […]