Tax Transparency by Multinationals: Trends in Country-by-Country Reports Public Disclosure


Author: Giulia Aliprandi

Country-by-Country Reporting is a key data source for understanding the activities of multinational firms. This note explores public Country-by-Country Reports (CbCRs) published by multinational companies to highlight several important trends. First, while only a small number of large multinationals currently publish their CbCRs, the number of companies is increasing rapidly for both large and smaller multinational firms. However, these reports are scattered across different sets of documents, making collecting and analysing them challenging. Second, CbCR publishing is driven by European companies, especially companies active in the extractive sector. Finally, published reports are generally not complete in terms of variables included but present a satisfactory geographical disaggregation in most cases.