Law360 Quotes Peter Barnes: Tax Pros Warn Global Tax Reports May Not Be Confidential

The confidentiality of sensitive tax data that multinational companies must soon begin filing for each country they operate in could be betrayed by potential data leaks or if governments bow to public pressure for disclosure, experts said Thursday at the American Bar Association’s annual tax conference in Philadelphia.

Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered's Peter A. Barnes said that “there are clearly pressures from some nongovernmental organizations” to publicly reveal CbC reporting information, and that taxpayers should recognize the possibility of public disclosure.

“In theory, these country-by-country reports are supposed to be confidential. That is, they are given to your jurisdiction in exchange under tax information exchange agreements or tax treaties and they’re used by the foreign jurisdictions and the U.S. jurisdiction for risk assessment. I think, in general, there’s an assumption that that’s unlikely to be the case,” Barnes said. For the complete article, please visit Law360's website (subscription required).

Excerpt taken from the article “Tax Pros Warn Global Tax Reports May Not Be Confidential” by Vidya Kauri for Law360.