Last year, proponents started asking companies to provide reports about their compliance with a new standard on tax compliance issued by the Global Reporting Initiative. The resolution earned 17.5 percent at Amazon.com and 23 percent at Microsoft. It has been resubmitted at these companies and also filed at Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil. Earlier proposals of this ilk did not survive challenges at the SEC because companies successfully argued taxes are an ordinary business issue, but the SEC disagreed with a challenge from Amazon using that argument last year.

The proposal asks, as it did last year, for “a tax transparency report to shareholders…prepared in consideration of the indicators and guidelines set forth in the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) Tax Standard.” The resolution notes that when companies shift their profits offshore, it costs the U.S. government up to $100 billion a year, and that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates global costs may be $240 billion. The Global Reporting Initiative seeks to address the problem.