Thread by @alexcobham

Starting a thread with a little timeline, because there is some significant news coming down the pipe today...

Back in the early 2000s, illustrious #taxjustice peeps @jechristensen56 @premnsikka @RichardJMurphy discussed the opacity of multinational companies, including on tax

Their discussions can be seen as part of a scattered history extending over decades, centring on attempts to require transparency from multinational companies about their global operations, including path-breaking work by the G77 countries @UNCTAD - unctad.org/en/Publication…

Those decades of work seemed to have ended in failure. UNCTAD had been pushed by OECD countries into focusing on 'investment promotion' rather than national sovereignty and corporate accountability; and the big 4 had seized the accounting standard setting agenda for themselves.

Following those discussions, and with the formal establishment of @TaxJusticeNet in 2003, came the publication of @RichardJMurphy's original draft accounting standard for country-by-country reporting - which you can still find here visar.csustan.edu/aaba/ProposedA…

As we set out a few years ago with @jwyg, Richard's original standard has since become the basis for a myriad of country by country reporting standards (some better than others!) - including, at the behest of the G20, the @OECDtax standard
datafortaxjustice.net/what-do-they-p…

The OECD standard has very substantial weaknesses, including important missing elements; a lack of clarity on key variables; the failure to reconcile with consolidated accounts; and of course, the fact that the data are not (yet) required to be public.

Nevertheless, the OECD standard represented a dramatic step forward. The old arguments about inconceivable compliance costs, from multinationals and their big 4 advisers, went out the window: suddenly it was possible after all to do this type of reporting, and no one died.

What is left is a two-fold requirement for improvement: that the standard be sharply improved, and the data be made public.

In the meantime, collaborative work between investors, reporting companies, big 4 accountants, labour unions and tax justice experts led to a breakthrough: the @GRI_Secretariat tax standard taxjustice.net/2019/12/05/bus…

The GRI standard was immediately, and to the surprise of most concerned, backed by an unprecedented consensus report from the big 4 themselves, drafted for @wef
weforum.org/whitepapers/to…

"This report proposes a common, core set of metrics and recommended disclosures [to align] mainstream reporting and... reduce fragmentation and encourage faster progress towards a systemic solution, perhaps to include a generally accepted international accounting standard."

Sidenote: the big 4 are, in truth, completely split on this issue. Tax advisory units that rely on profit shifting strategies to make their money remain, as you'd imagine, deeply opposed. But the tide is turning, and the audit & assurance people value this key reporting.

A few months later, earlier this year, the OECD began public consultation on how to fix its own country by country standard. The response was dramatic: taxjustice.net/2020/03/19/inv…

In short, investors holding trillions of dollars of assets came down in almost complete alignment with civil society calls for the OECD to do two things: align with the GRI standard, and make the data public.

We understand that the OECD Inclusive Framework discussed the responses to the review a few days ago - but no one is holding their breath about the IF being able to require progress, when they've been excluded completely from any influence over the tax reform negotiations.

But the OECD itself is well aware of the value of improving its standard - and OECD staff have played a critical role in moving forward a process that finally comes to fruition today, to publish *aggregate* country by country reporting data.

This was first announced two years ago - I was very excited taxjustice.net/2018/07/24/pro…

And so today, after many delays, that data has been published by the OECD. Yay!

But first, some caveats...

Caveat 1: the data is aggregated, in ways that remain somewhat unclear, to the country level. So we should know e.g. how all German multinationals (above the size threshold) behaved in Sweden - but if some shifted profits and some didn't, this may be largely lost in aggregation

Caveat 2: many countries have applied the data standard badly (whether vexatiously or through genuine uncertainty), so the results won't be precisely comparable across countries, and in ways that may not be immediately obvious

Caveat 3: many countries, despite agreeing to the precise format for aggregate data publication by the OECD, have withheld data in part or completely, in order not to reveal the pattern of profit shifting by their own multinationals.

Here's the UK reneging on earlier commitments, for example - having just discovered 'concerns' about the data...
taxjustice.net/2020/05/06/uk-…

Caveat 4: ok, this is just a grumble. The data were released to journalists under embargo a few days ago, but apparently under the condition that they couldn't be shared with the likes of us(!).

One effect of that is that when the embargo lifted an hour ago, you'll have seen some immediate press coverage with no critical commentary. Well played, OECD...

But not to worry: if you hang around for an hour or so, we will have a bells and whistles press release for you, with as good a dissection of the global profit shifting revealed by the data as you're likely to find today...

And one of the top lines will be this: even with all the caveats about the data standard, the aggregation and the attempts to undermine it;

Today's publication still likely represents the biggest step forward - so far, ever - in the tax transparency of multinationals.

There's a long way to go - but the 'gorillas in the mist' ((c) @jwyg ) are more visible as a group today, in terms of global scale and tax behaviour, than they've ever been.

Kudos to the #taxjustice expert activists who have taken us this far - and will take us further still.

While we finalise our top line findings, here's a handy guide to some of the data, from the team that has worked on it

https://twitter.com/PierceOReilly/status/1280800766937239552?s=20

And that team, who have taken on not only the pain of data wrangling, but also some of the politics of member states' addiction to corporate tax opacity... kudos!

https://twitter.com/PierceOReilly/status/1280801925802459137?s=20

Press release has gone out, embargoed for midnight - shout if you should have got it but didn't!

Here's a brilliant thread from @javiergb_com, summarising his key results from the OECD’s aggregate country-by-country reporting data

https://twitter.com/javiergb_com/status/1281130384818921472?s=19