Policy Note: Tax Transparency Is Here to Stay: An Analysis of the Public CbCR Directive

Abstract

On 21 December 2021, the ‘Public CbCR Directive’ entered into force. According to this new directive, companies within its scope will have to publish a public country-by-country report including income tax information for each European Union Member State where the company has a presence. Whereas most companies in scope already prepared such a report, until now this was shared only with tax authorities for the purpose of enabling a high-level tax risk assessment. On the contrary, the new directive requires companies to publish the tax information on their website in order to be shared with investors, civil society and the general public. Ahead of this directive however, it can be witnessed that an increasing number of companies is already publishing tax information on a voluntary basis, despite the fact that publishing such information can lead to greater scrutiny and can potentially harm a company´s reputation. This contribution is a formal discourse of how the Public CbCR Directive initiative is a logical consequence of years of corporate tax transparency discussions and how it fits into broader global environmental, social, and governance (ESG) trends. Corporate tax, tax transparency, ESG, Directive (EU) 2021/2101, Public CbCR, country-by-country, transfer pricing, CbCR, tax avoidance, transparency.