Public country-by-country reporting

What the EU is doing and why

The EU is taking concrete steps to promote corporate tax transparency and accountability through public country‑by‑country reporting. It requires multinational companies to disclose where they generate their profits and where they pay their taxes, giving citizens, investors and policymakers better insight into corporate behaviour.

Country-by-country reporting differs from regular financial reporting in that companies have to publish information for every country they operate in rather than providing a single set of information at global level.

Specific rules in the Accounting Directive require mining and forestry companies to use this system to report on the taxes, royalties and bonuses that they pay worldwide.

Requirements for extractive and logging industries

Under EU rules, listed and large non-listed companies that are active in the oil, gas, mining or logging sectors have specific reporting obligations.

They must report all payments to governments broken down by country. They must also report by project if these payments have been attributed to a specific project.

These rules aim to improve the transparency of payments made to governments all over the world by the extractive and logging industries.

This helps populations of resource-rich countries hold their governments accountable for the exploitation of natural resources, in line with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The EITI is a voluntary initiative promoting public awareness of how countries manage their oil, gas and mineral resources.

Transparency of multinationals on corporate income tax per country

To further enhance tax transparency, the EU introduced the Country‑by‑Country Directive , a country‑by‑country reporting obligation for large multinationals with global revenues above EUR 750 million. These additional transparency requirements will apply to any multinational company – whether European or not – that is significantly active in the EU.

From 2026, these companies will have to publicly disclose, for each EU Member State and for non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, how much tax they pay and where. The reports will also include essential contextual information such as turnover, number of employees, nature of activities, profits, retained earnings and the list of subsidiaries, both inside and outside the EU. Companies will have to prepare their report using a common template, and structure the data by using a specific taxonomy (XBRL) and provide it to the public in a specific electronic format (xHTML with iXBRL markup embedding).

This transparency will help citizens and stakeholders assess whether companies are contributing their fair share of tax in the countries where they operate, strengthen public trust in tax systems, and support a more informed democratic debate.

Country-by-country reporting taxonomy project

The Commission launched the public country‑by‑country reporting project in 2025 to assist companies in preparing their reports. The aim of the project is to develop a prototype of the core taxonomy, a report generator, and all related guidance. The use of these deliverables is voluntary, and responsibility for complying with the legal requirements remains with the reporting companies.

Access the taxonomy and report generator