Ireland consults on adoption of public country-by-country tax reporting

By Doug Connolly, MNE Tax

The Irish government is seeking input, through a consultation published December 20, on its implementation of the new EU directive requiring public country-by-country reporting of income tax information by certain large multinationals.

In announcing the consultation, Irish Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation, Robert Troy, said that the new requirement was important “to restore public trust in the fairness and transparency of our tax system and to ensure a level playing field between EU and third-country multinational enterprises.”

Nonetheless, the Irish Independent reports that Ireland’s government had earlier sought to prevent the adoption of the EU rules but was unable to veto them because they were deemed accounting rather than tax rules.

Under the EU directive, which was approved last month, the new reporting requirement will apply to certain multinationals with total consolidated revenues of EUR 750 million (approximately USD 845 million), regardless of if they are based in the EU. Such multinationals operating in more than one country in the EU will be required to publicly disclose income tax information on a country-by-country basis for EU member states and also for non-EU “black list” and “gray list” jurisdictions.

The directive allows some options in how EU member states implement the rules, which is the subject of the Irish consultation. Member states have until June 22, 2023, to transpose the rules.

The directive permits member states to allow companies to defer for up to five years disclosing certain information that would otherwise be required if the disclosure would be “prejudicial to the commercial position of the undertakings.”

The consultation asks for input on whether Ireland should adopt this deferral option.

The directive also generally requires companies to publish the relevant information on their websites within 12 months of the end of their financial year. However, the directive allows member states to include an exemption from such publishing requirement if the company makes the information accessible in a machine-readable format on the website of the Companies Registration Office and free of charge to third parties in the EU.

The consultation likewise asks whether Ireland should include this publishing exemption.

Comments will be accepted on the consultation until February 18, 2022.