It must be tough being a bureaucrat and having a sense of humour. For international bureaucrats I guess it’s even worse. However, we can say without fear of contradiction that the OECD has at least one jokester on the payroll.
As part of a series of blogs on a recent OECD report on tax and its implications for companies, here’s the joke:
“Taxpayers should disclose more targeted information about their tax planning strategies, and transfer pricing documentation requirements should be less burdensome and more targeted.”
Get it?
Nor did I until I read further on down the page. Here’s how the jokester unwraps the joke.
He wants:
- Measures of the allocation of income across jurisdictions relative to the measures of value creating activities
- Techniques to monitor the specific issues identified in the [OECD] Action Plan
- Identification of the types of data that taxpayers should provide tax administrators
- And, the methodologies that can be used to analyse these data and to assess the likely economic implications of Base Erosion and Profit Shifting behaviours and actions taken to address Base Erosion and Profit Shifting.
In 1913 Justice Brandeis declared sunshine to be “the best of disinfectants”. One century on the OECD wants to force feed the tax industry with a whole bottleful of transparency-Dettol.
At the end of the day the bureaucrats always have the last laugh.
For the few companies still with their heads stuck in the sand about whether they need to say more about tax, this list of proposals from the OECD will certaintly not having them laughing all the way to the bank.
Note: This blog addresses issues raised by OECD’s proposed Action 10. Action 10 is scheduled to be completed by September 2015. For more on Corporate Citizenship’s views on tax see our paper Tax as a Corporate Responsibility Issue