Tax justice and the challenges of measuring illicit financial flows
Multinational corporation tax avoidance is primarily about tax avoidance. That is, recording transactions in ways that are legal but which might not meet with the approval of the all the tax authorities who might be impacted by the way in which transactions are recorded are reported. This is most especially true of many transactions involving tax havens. The problem with tracing transactions recorded in these places has, however, been locating any data on them because if the accounting opacity that they create, which is also permitted by existing accounting standards for multinational corporations. Country-by-country reporting was created to tackle this opacity head-on by requiring that all large corporations report all their transactions wherever they might arise. The result could be far greater information on the illicit financial flows of major companies, or their potential elimination.