Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will bring forward legislative proposals to require large companies to publish a country-by-country report in their annual financial report.

The UK supports efforts to improve tax transparency. We initiated the international work on country-by-country (CbC) reporting to tax authorities during our G8 Presidency in 2013, calling on the OECD to develop a template for this as part of the BEPS project.

The UK was the first to commit to implementing the OECD model with legislation in Finance Act 2015. We signed the OECD agreement to share the CbC reports with other tax authorities in January 2016 and issued our final CbC reporting regulations on 26 February 2016.

The Government believes that there is scope for greater transparency by pressing the case for public CbC reporting on a multilateral basis. As the Chancellor has said, this is something that the UK will seek to promote internationally.