Corporate tax avoidance: is tax transparency the solution?

Corporate tax avoidance has been a matter of considerable public attention, particularly since the 2008 global financial crisis. The nature of calls for tax reform and increased regulation, advocated most prominently by tax activists and NGOs, has revolved around transparency as a possible corrective to unacceptable tax avoidance, although there is no consensus as to what the term tax avoidance encompasses and when it becomes unacceptable. We examine two responses to calls for increased transparency about the tax affairs of multinational entities: firstly, country by country reporting that provides information to tax authorities, and secondly the UK requirement for publication of tax strategies, whereby large companies put information into the public domain. We find considerable misunderstanding about the benefits of transparency in this setting. By failing to consider the limits of transparency initiatives there is a risk of dysfunctional consequences, for example additional costs in providing and proces...