AUSTRALIA: COUNTRY-BY-COUNTRY REPORTING UPDATE

The Australia government on 6 August 2015 released two exposure drafts in relation to its multinational tax integrity measures. In the 2015 budget, the government announced a package of measures to address multinational tax avoidance. As part of these measures, the two exposure drafts would: (1) introduce the new OECD country-by-country (CbC) reporting requirement; (2) adopt the new OECD standard on transfer pricing documentation (i.e. the Master File/Local File approach); and (3) double the administrative penalties for multinational entities that are found to have entered into tax avoidance or profit shifting schemes.

These measures are proposed to apply to multinational groups with annual global revenue of AUS $1 billion or more—whether Australian headquartered or Australian subsidiaries of overseas headquartered groups of this size.
The KPMG member firm in Australia has further examined these proposals. Read an August 2015 report prepared by the KPMG member firm in Australia.

The KPMG report looks at:

•  The increased compliance obligations for multinational entities
• The effect on inbound and outbound multinationals
• The challenges faced in completing a CbC report
• CbC report – undertaking a “dry run”
• Australian documentation vs. Master File and Local File
• Penalty provisions
• The transparency movement