European Union: Update on public CbCR

International Tax Review is part of Legal Benchmarking Limited, 1-2 Paris Garden, London, SE1 8ND

Copyright © Legal Benchmarking Limited and its affiliated companies 2025

Accessibility | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Modern Slavery Statement

European Union: Update on public CbCR

intl-updates-small.jpg
made.jpg

Bob van der Made

On June 12 2017, the European Parliament's joint ECON and Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee members adopted their joint report on the European Commission's draft directive on public country-by-country reporting (CbCR), with 38 votes in favour, nine against and no less than 36 abstentions, i.e. not exactly a slam dunk. The consolidated committee's compromise report will be published at the end of June or at the beginning of July.

The adopted report proposes to keep the European Commission's originally envisaged annual turnover threshold for large companies at more than €750 million ($845 million). However, a safeguard clause is introduced with the possible exemption for companies from disclosure on the grounds of "commercial sensitivity". This exemption would be annually renewable and will be monitored and reviewed each year by the EU Commission. Another new major feature in this in effect draft formal position of the European Parliament on public CbCR is the extension of the scope of the directive to non-EU countries as well (i.e. no longer only aggregate information would be required for a multinational group's activities in the rest of the world).

The ECON/JURI committee members of the European Parliament rejected the start of trilogue negotiations with representatives of the EU Council and of the EU Commission at this stage. Because of the many abstentions in the vote on this report, this approach makes perfect sense, also given that the public CbCR proposal is politically still going nowhere in the Council (the parallel track for the proposal) for now. No real progress is expected in the Council at the political level before the results of the German general elections to be held on September 24 2017 are known. The EU member states in the Council who are understood to oppose the Commission's public CbCR proposal, primarily but not only because of the key issue of the directive's legal basis, include Austria, Cyprus, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Malta and Sweden.

As a first next step, the European Parliament's ECON/JURI committee report will be put to a confirmation vote in the European Parliament's Plenary Session (NB: new amendments to the report are possible) likely to be held in the Autumn of 2017.

Bob van der Made (bob.van.der.made@nl.pwc.com)

PwC EU Public Affairs-Brussels

Tel: +31 6 130 96 296

Website: www.pwc.com/eudtg

more across site & shared bottom lb ros

More from across our site

Over two-thirds of survey respondents back the continuation of the UK’s digital services tax, research commissioned by the Fair Tax Foundation also found
Given the US/G7 pillar two deal, the OECD is in danger of being replaced by the UN as the leading global tax reform forum
Cinven’s latest investment follows its acquisition of a stake in Grant Thornton UK in December; in other news, a barrister listed by HMRC as a tax avoidance promoter has alleged harassment
CIT base narrowing measures remain more prevalent than increased CIT rates, the report also highlighted
ITR's parent company, LBG, will acquire The Lawyer, a leading news, intelligence and data-driven insight provider for the legal industry, from Centaur Media
KPMG UK’s Graeme Webster and KPMG Meijburg & Co’s Eduard Sporken outline the 20-year evolution of MAPAs, with DEMPE analyses becoming more prevalent and MAPA requirements growing stricter
Rishi Joshi, of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, warns of potential judicial overreach as assets are recharacterised to bypass a legislative exclusion
Only 2% of in-house survey respondents said they were ‘heavy’ users of AI for TP, Aibidia’s report also found
There was a ‘deeply embedded culture within PwC that routinely disregarded formal confidentiality obligations,’ the chairman of Australia’s Tax Practitioners Board said
Jennifer Best was most recently the acting commissioner of the IRS’s large business and international division
Gift this article