The tax transparency debate continues to gain momentum. Stakeholders are demanding more meaningful information on tax, resulting in some companies opting to publish comprehensive tax disclosures. More and more stakeholders and the public at large want to understand a company’s approach to tax and how much tax it pays. This can only be demonstrated through the information they communicate.
Tax disclosures continue to be redefined by the introduction of mandatory disclosure regulations such as public country-by-country reporting and the corporate sustainability reporting directive . Tax is becoming central to the broader environmental, social and governance agenda and is an increasingly important sustainability matter. There is no sign of these trends abating and multinational organisations, in particular, must now navigate a diverse range of tax disclosure requirements.
About 80 per cent of companies referenced tax in their broader sustainability reports, up 14 per cent from last year and an acknowledgment by companies that tax is an important sustainability metric. A fifth of companies voluntarily disclosed some details of their total tax contribution information at a jurisdictional level. TTC is the total amount of taxes paid by a company, including taxes borne by the company and taxes collected on behalf of the exchequer.