In the European Union, there has been public country-by-country reporting on financial institutions for a decade now. Studies have shown that the European banks have reduced their usage of subsidiaries in tax havens and have, in fact, increased the amount of tax paid by, I think, an estimated 10% from what was there prior to that disclosure requirement.
There are about 150 companies around the world that do voluntary public country-by-country reporting now, following the global reporting initiative, GRI, tax standard. The Australian legislation is based on that. It is the first widely recognized standard for public country-by-country reporting. It builds upon what the OECD does already in terms of confidential country-by-country reporting.
