EU shelves plans to toughen up tax transparency rules for multinationals

Plans to make companies reveal how much tax they pay country by country were abandoned yesterday, knocking back the efforts of lawmakers who had pushed to curb tax avoidance by multinational businesses.

Schemes used by Starbucks, Apple, Amazon and other corporations operating within the law to minimise their tax burden prompted heated public debate last year and a pledge by British prime minister David Cameron and others to tackle the issue.

The matter has since dropped off the political agenda and lawmakers from the European Parliament and EU countries yesterday shelved proposals to toughen new transparency rules by forcing big companies to disclose how much tax they pay in each of the countries where they have operations.