Businesses Fret Over Scope of Australia Tax-Disclosure Carveouts

Businesses and tax practitioners are worried that Australian authorities will make it too hard for multinational companies to get exemptions from new tax-disclosure requirements. Transparency advocates fear they’ll make it too easy.

Australia enacted its new rules on public country-by-country tax reporting last year, but it left open some aspects of when and how companies could avoid disclosing parts of their tax information because it’s “commercially sensitive” or for other reasons. Some companies fear their competitors would use sensitive information against them if they had to publicly disclose exactly where they are paying taxes.

The Australian Taxation Office is currently ...