Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor legislators this week introduced a bill that aims to force corporations to disclose more about their finances and tax bills in the face of increasingly opaque tax avoidance strategies by the nation’s biggest companies. 

Rep. Emma Greenman, DFL-Minneapolis, proposed a bill on Monday that would make a corporation’s state tax returns available on a state website. The proposed disclosure law would apply to corporations that make $250 million or more in aggregate gross national sales and receipts, meaning it would apply to the biggest corporations that do business in Minnesota, like Amazon and Target.

“Disclosure and transparency is just good across the board when it comes to the biggest actors in our economy,” Greenman said. “It’s really important that we, as lawmakers, are showing the public that we’re willing to be fair and transparent about the biggest economic actors.”

A Pew Research study last year found that 60% of Americans said the feeling that corporations don’t pay their fair share “bothers them a lot.”

Unsurprisingly, the state’s business lobby and trade organization are against the proposed bill (HF4513).

Kurt Zellers, CEO of the Minnesota Business Partnership — which lobbies for the state’s biggest companies like 3M and Cargill — questioned the legislators’ intent , saying it would make corporations’ tax information available to competitors “or worse, nefarious dictator-led countries.”

“Why would any lawmaker want to punish homegrown Minnesota businesses and put them at a competitive disadvantage? There’s a reason no other state in the nation has passed a law like this,” Zellers said in a written statement to the Reformer. “Our lawmakers should never jeopardize our companies and their employees.”

The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce questioned the legality of the bill.

“This bill violates the long-standing principles of taxpayer confidentiality, likely runs afoul of federal law that prohibits states from releasing tax return information and undermines Minnesota’s competitiveness as other states do not require similar public disclosure of confidential tax return information,” said Beth Kadoun, vice president of fiscal and tax policy with the Minnesota Chamber, in a statement.

Greenman said corporations for years have claimed the state’s policies are driving businesses out of state, but it doesn’t happen. She cited the latest February forecast as evidence that corporations are making big bucks in Minnesota, as the state’s budget agency said corporate profits and taxes are higher than expected.

“This is a piece of information, just disclosure,” Greenman said. “It puts no more burdens on these corporations, and I think it’ll be useful for policy-making, to the public and for creating a fairer economy.”

Democratic lawmakers are also again eyeing a new tax regime that would require corporations to report their worldwide revenue, instead of just U.S. income. 

Rep. Mike Howard, DFL-Richfield, introduced a bill (HF4535) this week that would study the impacts of Minnesota implementing what’s called worldwide combined reporting, a proposal that DFL lawmakers dropped during the eleventh hour of last year’s session after corporations successfully lobbied lawmakers and Gov. Tim Walz to kill it.

Worldwide combined reporting requires multinational corporations to pay income taxes based on their entire global profits rather than what they make in the U.S. Multinational corporations often shift their profits to subsidiaries outside of the U.S. to avoid taxes. 

Howard said he’s proposing the study because when lawmakers proposed worldwide combined reporting last year, there were too many unknowns, like how the Department of Revenue would enforce it and how much revenue it would generate for the state.

“What this bill is about is making sure our tax system is fair and making sure that corporate entities are paying their fair share,” Howard said. “Fundamentally, the idea is something a lot of Minnesotans support in terms of just the basic fairness, so let’s get the details right.”

Howard said this year lawmakers intend to study it. Depending on what the study finds, they could implement it at a later date.

Both the Greenman and Howard bills will be heard in the House Taxes Committee on Wednesday.