At the moment, Bent Bananas International (our 'fictional' enterprise from our beginner's guide to tax dodging) is only obliged to report its overall consolidated financial results - even though it's made up of a huge 'bunch' of subsidiaries.

With this dearth of detail, tax inspectors can't tell which countries the actual work has been done in, so they have no idea if the tax received in each country is fair.

But, if Bent Bananas International had to report on a country by country basis, like this...

...tax inspectors could see where the company actually trades and the taxes it is paying. So, they could ask questions like "Did just one person in Switzerland reallymake £10m for the company?", "Were all those bananas from the Costa Rican plantation reallyonly worth £50m?" And of course, "Why the heckdidn't we have access to this information before?!"

Chances are, Bent Bananas International would get a visit from revenue staff in Costa Rica and the UK... huzzah and hurrah!!!

Right now, if a tax authority in one country thinks a company - or a person, for that matter - is on the dodge, it's very hard for them to get basic financial information from tax authorities in other countries.

That's because even basic information is not automatically shared between all legitimate tax authorities. Instead they have to ask for it, giving quite a lot of detail to explain why they are suspicious. Worse, they can only ask countries that they've already signed a treaty with.

Assembling a big enough dossier of information to convince the other country to give you the information you want costs a bomb, which makes it almost impossible for poor countries to tackle international tax dodging.

Worse still, when the G20 pressed the tax havens to sign at least 12 treaties each, they promptly set about signing them with each other and the mighty economic powers of the Faroe Islands and Greenland - just to make up the quota. Aren't they just lovely?!