The EU Member States’ negotiating mandate on public country-by-country reporting (public CbCR) was established under the Portuguese Presidency of the Council on the basis of its compromise draft following the informal Council video conference on 25 February 2021. The mandate also was approved by Member State permanent representatives in the ‘Coreper’ meeting on 3 March 2021. The EU institutions will now start trilogue negotiations with a view to agreeing on the legislative text within the
next few months. The Member States likely will reach agreement before the end of June 2021. Although the transposition into Member States’ domestic law could take another two years, companies would need to start preparing and testing their tax data and their narratives sooner rather than later.
The draft Directive refers to in-scope groups, subsidiaries and branches as large or medium-sized, broadly by reference to an EUR750m threshold.
This Bulletin covers:
- key differences between this text and the amended version proposed by Parliament
- differences between the Council version and the private CbCR to tax authorities (as in BEPS Action 13 and as embodied in the Directive on Administrative Cooperation on Tax (DAC)) or other comparable public CbCR regimes or proposals, and
- the extent to which non-EU headquartered groups would be required to report information under this initiative.
