EU Public country-by-country reporting

Who must comply?

• EU ultimate parent undertakings of MNE with consolidated revenue of more than €750 million for two consecutive years

• EU standalone undertakings with revenue of more than €750 million for two consecutive years or more
• EU large and medium-sized subsidiary undertakings controlled by a non-EU ultimate parent undertaking with consolidated revenue of more than €750 million for two consecutive years or more.
• EU branches controlled by a non-EU ultimate parent undertaking with consolidated revenue of more than €750 million for two consecutive years or more.

What do i need to report?

The regulation has five sections or which the first four are mandatory.

Section 1- General information

• This is a table capturing the generic information of the report, such as the name of the ultimate parent or standalone undertaking, the start and end date of the financial year, and the currency. It also includes a confirmation that the information in the report is based on the reporting instructions in the Directive on Administrative Cooperation.

Section 2- Overview of information on a country-by-country basis 

• This table includes a list of all the group’s tax jurisdictions, including the country code in which they are located. For each tax jurisdiction there is requirement to disclose key financial information such as revenues, profits before taxes, tax expense, actual tax paid and accumulated earnings and a non-financial piece of information, number of employees.

Section 3 – List of subsidiaries and activities

• For each tax jurisdiction listed in section 2, the reporting entity must provide a list of subsidiaries and brief description of the nature of their activities.

Section 4 – Omitted information 

• The applicable national law in some member states may allow for some information to be temporarily omitted. Where information has been omitted from sections 2 or 3, this must be disclosed in the first box of Section 4. Any information which was omitted in previous years but now must be disclosed, is included in the second box of this section.

Section 5 – Explanations for material discrepancies

• The final section of pCbCR is voluntary and attempts to capture information about material discrepancies between income tax paid and tax accrued.

Where should the report be published?

• The Accounting Directive requires the pCbCR report to be published on the website of the ultimate parent undertaking or of the standalone undertaking.
• The implementing legislation of several EU member states also requires filing on the national register.
• The report must be available free of charge to any third party within the EU.

What do you need to make an iXBRL report?

iXBRL and XHTML are document formats, the same as Microsoft Word’s DOCX format or Adobe’s PDF. XHTML is the format used to display websites and, since iXBRL is built on top of XHTML, annual reports can be viewed in any web browser. iXBRL also includes computer-readable information in the form of iXBRL tags that identify and define the meaning of the tagged numbers or text.

Typically, the production of a company’s annual report will start in Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign. Once the document is ready it will be converted from a PDF or Microsoft Word document into the required format (XHTML or iXBRL) using specialist software. Then, if required, iXBRL tags will be added in a process known as “tagging”. When tags are added to a document, they can be viewed in an iXBRL viewer or read by computers to enhance analysis and automated uses of the data in the reports.