11 July 2016

FEE´s proposal for public country-by-country reporting on disclosing tax information

FEE has created a template that outlines the basic information for such companies to disclose when issuing a public country-by-country report so as to provide useful information to stakeholders whilst minimising the costs of preparation and the risk of disclosing economically sensitive information.

A common reporting format

The objectives of public country-by-country reporting of tax information are to:

•provide confirmation that businesses are complying with their local corporate tax obligations in all of the jurisdictions in which they operate

•form part of a corporate communication strategy to better inform internal and external stakeholders of its tax policy and activities

•provide comparable information to stakeholders to better assess the impact of governments’ tax policies on both corporate and tax administration behaviour and performance

•increase the accountability of governments by:

-       giving citizens another source of information about the tax that should go into national budget

-       highlighting subsidies given to transnational businesses

•create a level playing field and enable benchmarking by industry sector

•assist national tax authorities, particularly when these are under-resourced

 

To fulfil these objectives, a country-by-country tax report must be:

•fit-for-purpose – providing the key information necessary to make an informed judgement

•simple and understandable for both internal and external stakeholders

•capable of being audited

•integrated in the existing international country-by-country reporting frameworks – Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the US Dodd-Frank Act Section 1504, the EU Directives on Accounting and Transparency, EU Capital Requirements Directive IV (CRD IV)

•capable of being implemented with no or low additional costs of compliance and administrative burdens for both businesses and tax administrations

Full proposal

© FEE