(Bloomberg) -- European Union officials struck a deal to crack down on international companies' efforts to dodge taxes by requiring greater disclosure, as a coordinated push by governments to take a bigger slice of corporate revenue gathers pace.
Negotiators representing the European Parliament and EU governments agreed on Tuesday to a package forcing companies with a total revenue exceeding 750 million euros ($917 million) in each of the last two consecutive financial years to disclose data -- including pretax profit or loss and income taxes paid -- from operations in each member state.
Companies will also have to report their income booked in countries singled out by the EU as tax havens.
“So much public money right now after corona is invested, so the multinationals get a lot of public money and now we get the basic information of those multinationals,” said Evelyn Regner, an Austrian center-left lawmaker who is one of the European Parliament's lead negotiators on the issue.
Read More: EU Sets Up Tax Evasion Policy Hub Amid Push for Global Deal
The deal still needs formal adoption before it's enacted into law. After that, member states will have 18 months to adopt it into national law. Earlier on Tuesday, the EU launched a body to help drive policies against tax evasion and avoidance. The so-called EU Tax Observatory will become “a hub of new ideas” that will inform the bloc's decision-makers by compiling data, and providing research and analysis, the European Commission said.
The moves come as members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development negotiate a global deal to overhaul tax rules and make multinationals pay more in countries where they operate. Momentum toward such an accord has been stoked by proposals from U.S. President Joe Biden's administration that include a global corporate minimum tax of at least 15%.
“What this means is that the union is now clearly the world leader in terms of corporate transparency,” said Pedro Lourtie, representative of the Portuguese presidency of the EU. He said that if the agreement is confirmed, citizens “will have access to tax information from the very large multinationals.”
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