Among the many stories about some U.S. corporations looking into becoming a foreign corporation through an “inversion” is the question of whether one possibly remedy is to make corporate tax return information available to the public. For example, an op ed by Catherine Rampell in The Washington Post (8/21/14) was titled: “Shareholders, public deserve tax transparency.” She suggests that all publicly-traded companies be required to make their tax returns available to the public.

I don’t agree. For a few reasons:

• Too complex to understand: These corporate returns are complicated and few can truly understand them. In addition to the basic corporate forms, there will be numerous Read More