PwC

Bob van der Made of PwC explains why there has been a recent upsurge in conversations about public country-by-country reporting (CbCR) in Europe and the US, and how COVID-19 may be changing the game.

Bob van der Made of PwC looks at the EU's progress on public country-by-country reporting (CbCR) and the deadlock that has emerged.

Bob van der Made of PwC assesses the current level of tax harmonisation across EU member states, and evaluates whether there would be further harmonisation under a new EU Commission.

Tax transparency and governance has moved up in the hierarchy of key topics and risks for the C-suite to monitor and manage. Tax has changed from simply just being in the exclusive realm of the tax director and being a compliance concern for multinationals, to becoming the more consequential strategic matter it is today. How you communicate on where and how you pay your taxes, and what your narrative is in terms of tax strategy and corporate social responsibility, has become increasingly important. This is due to the large increase in tax transparency requirements that have been mandated at international, EU and national levels. This trend started in 2012 and has intensified since revelations such as 'LuxLeaks', as well as the Panama and Paradise Papers. However, there are still quite a few CEOs, CFOs and tax directors – as well as tax advisors and others – who expect that the current transparency drive will soon blow over post-BEPS. So which one is it for tax transparency? Are we at the beginning of the end, or at the end of the beginning?

On September 12 2018, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivered his 2018 State of the European Union (EU) address at the European Parliament. Accompanying his speech were a number of more detailed policy documents, the most important of which was the Letter of Intent from Juncker and First VP Frans Timmermans to the presidents of the European Parliament and the Austrian EU Council presidency.

During a debate at the European Parliament in mid-April 2018, a representative from the Council of the European Union confirmed to members of the European Parliament (MEPs) that there were "unresolved political issues" which prevented agreement at the council on the European Commission's April 2016 pending proposal for public country-by-country reporting (public CbCR). The two largest parties in the European Parliament, the EPP (Christian Democrats) and the S&D (Social Democrats), asked the council to unblock the negotiations on the proposal for public CbCR. This was generally understood to be the last chance to reach a deal as Austria, which holds the six-monthly rotating EU Council presidency from July 1 to December 31 2018, and could drive discussions in the council forward, is not in favour of the commission's proposal. Germany's new Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said in June 2018 that the German government needed more time and he also counselled caution about the Commission's proposal and hinted at following a tax-centric approach instead.