Panama’s tax authorities on January 24 signed the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement for Country-by-Country Reporting.

The agreement is designed to make it easier for countries to exchange country-by-country reports on large multinational firms.

The plan to exchange the reports was agreed to by nations in 2015 as a result of the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project. The exchanges should make it easier for tax authorities to detect tax avoidance by MNEs through transfer pricing and other means.

Country-by-country reporting is considered “minimum standard” under the BEPS plan.