The Contribution that Company Regulation Might Make to the Tax Gap

There has been an increasing focus on almost all aspects of financial transparency since the onset of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. This has resulted in international cooperation to deliver measures such as country-by-country reporting, the automatic exchange of tax related information between tax authorities, including those of tax havens, and the recording of the beneficial ownership of both companies and trusts on public record. Backed by authorities such as the OECD and European Union reform in these issue has proceeded at pace. There are, however, questions left unanswered as a result. In particular it has not been known whether the capacity to process data has advanced to meet the demand for information that the new procedures presume to exist. This paper sets out the approaches that members of the Coffers research project propose using to research one aspect of this issue, which is the administrative capacity available within company data registries within EU member states. The research is designed to evidence the available support that these registries might supply to facilitate the tackling of illicit financial flows, including tax evasion. This support includes enforcing the collection of appropriate accounting and beneficial ownership data. The methods proposed include surveys of all the European Union’s member states’ company registries; a specific survey on the work of the UK’s company registry and a literature review to act as the foundation for the appraisal of the findings. It is anticipated that recommendations for action will be made.