Australia Move on Public Tax Reporting is Too Broad, Group Says

Australia’s proposal to require multinational companies to publicly disclose their tax information on a country-by-country basis goes too far, and the government should pursue a more restrained approach, a business group said Friday.

Making country-by-country tax information public could reveal sensitive corporate information and would “inevitably confuse and misinform the public,” through “selective reading and sensational reporting” of the information, the National Foreign Trade Council said in a comment letter to the Australian Treasury. The letter was in response to draft legislation unveiled this month.

• The proposal for public country-by-country reporting would discourage future investment in Australia and would disadvantage ...