Chamber Warns Tax Accounting Plan Could ‘Vilify’ Businesses

A proposal to make companies reveal more details about the taxes they pay can’t be driven by non-investor activists who want to “vilify” businesses and deter investments, the Chamber of Commerce warned in a letter to the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

FASB plans to release a plan this quarter to revamp the disclosures companies make about the taxes they owe. It’s an attempt to address long-running complaints that existing financial statement disclosures give little insight into company tax exposure.

The business group “is concerned that recent demands for increased income tax disclosures derive from a politically driven narrative—namely, that corporations ...