The OECD helped persuade Australia to water down a law that would have required thousands of multinationals to publicly say where they pay tax.
Two people familiar with the discussions told the Financial Times that the Paris-based organisation pressured Australia’s ruling Labor government to drop a crucial part of a new finance bill that would have required some multinationals to publicly disclose their country-by-country tax bills.
The OECD, which has driven efforts to force the world’s largest companies to pay their fair share of tax, believed the bill would have undermined its own efforts to make multinationals’ affairs less opaque.