Public Country-by-Country Reporting: Directive (EU) 2021/2101

There are two country-by-country reporting regimes, they do different things, and they are routinely discussed as though they were one. The first is the confidential report filed with a tax administration and exchanged between administrations under the OECD’s BEPS Action 13 minimum standard — the third tier of the documentation package our guide to master file, local file and CbCR covers. The second is a public disclosure obligation created in the EU by Directive (EU) 2021/2101, which puts a version of the same figures on a company website. This post deals with the second, and with the threshold test that governs both.

The EUR 750 million test is a group-level test

This is the point most often got wrong, and it is unambiguous in both instruments.

The OECD’s 2015 guidance on implementation sets an exemption from the general filing requirement for groups with annual consolidated group revenue in the immediately preceding fiscal year of less than EUR 750 million, or a near equivalent amount in domestic currency.

In EU law, Council Directive (EU) 2016/881 — DAC4 — defines an “Excluded MNE Group” in Annex III by reference to total consolidated group revenue of less than EUR 750 000 000, or an amount in local currency approximately equivalent to that figure as of January 2015, tested on the fiscal year immediately preceding the reporting fiscal year as shown in that year’s consolidated financial statements.

The measure is consolidated group revenue taken from consolidated financial statements. It is not the revenue of any single entity. Two consequences follow, and they run in opposite directions:

• A small local subsidiary of a group above the threshold is within the scope of the regime. Its own size is irrelevant.
• A large standalone company whose group-consolidated revenue is below EUR 750 million is not in scope, however substantial it looks locally.

Public CbCR applies a two-year version of the same test

Directive (EU) 2021/2101 uses the same figure with different timing. Article 48b applies where consolidated revenue on the balance sheet date exceeded EUR 750 000 000 for each of the last two consecutive financial years, as reflected in the consolidated financial statements. The report then covers the later of those two years.

So a group that crosses the threshold in a single year has a DAC4 filing obligation for the following year but does not yet have a public reporting obligation. A group that falls below in one of two years is outside the public regime for that cycle. The two regimes can therefore switch on at different times for the same group — which is a practical scheduling point rather than a technicality.

It is a company-law obligation, not a tax one

Directive (EU) 2021/2101 of 24 November 2021 amends Directive 2013/34/EU, the Accounting Directive, as regards disclosure of income tax information by certain undertakings and branches. It does not amend the directive on administrative cooperation in the field of taxation.

That legal-basis choice is deliberate and it has consequences. Public CbCR is a disclosure obligation sitting in company law alongside the other things an undertaking must publish, rather than a tax-administrative obligation owed to a revenue authority. It is enforced accordingly, it sits with the people who prepare and publish the financial statements, and it is not covered by the confidentiality and appropriate-use constraints that attach to information exchanged between tax administrations.

Dates, content and deadlines

• Transposition. Article 2 required Member States to adopt the necessary laws, regulations and administrative provisions by 22 June 2023.
• Application. Article 48g sets application at the latest from the first financial year starting on or after 22 June 2024.
• Content. Article 48c requires information relating to all the activities of the standalone undertaking or ultimate parent undertaking: name, financial year, currency, a description of activities, the number of full-time-equivalent employees, revenues, profit or loss before tax, accumulated earnings, income tax accrued during the relevant financial year, income tax paid, and a breakdown per Member State.
• Deadline. Article 48d requires publication within 12 months of the balance sheet date of the relevant financial year.
• Manner of publication. Also Article 48d: accessible to the public in at least one official language of the Union, free of charge, on the undertaking’s, subsidiary’s or branch’s website. Member States may instead permit publication on the register website referred to in Article 16 of Directive (EU) 2017/1132, provided it is machine-readable and free of charge and the undertaking’s own website points to it.

Recital 2 gives the rationale: enhancing public scrutiny of the corporate income taxes borne by multinational undertakings.

Three real differences from confidential CbCR

Stated from the two instruments’ own text rather than from commentary:

1. Audience. The DAC4 report is filed with a tax administration and exchanged between administrations subject to confidentiality and appropriate-use constraints. The public report must be made accessible to the public, free of charge, on a website or public register, in an EU official language and in machine-readable form.

2. Geographic granularity — and this one surprises people. Confidential CbCR requires a line for every tax jurisdiction. Public CbCR requires a per-Member-State breakdown plus listed non-cooperative jurisdictions, with the rest of the world capable of aggregation. So the public report is actually less granular outside the EU than the confidential one — it simply puts the EU figures in the open.

3. Timing and form. Public CbCR carries its own 12-month publication deadline and its own two-year threshold test. Neither exists in DAC4.

One correction worth making, because the claim circulates widely: there is no recital in Directive (EU) 2021/2101 contrasting public disclosure with confidential DAC4 reporting. The directive’s only reference to Directive 2011/16/EU is recital 14, which cites it purely as the source of the reporting instructions in Annex III. The public-versus-confidential contrast is a sound reading of the two regimes; it is not something a recital says.

The template, and what it contains

The confidential report follows a standard template of three tables, reproduced in DAC4 Annex III:

• Table 1 — overview of allocation of income, taxes and business activities by tax jurisdiction. Columns for tax jurisdiction; revenues split into unrelated party, related party and total; profit or loss before income tax; income tax paid on a cash basis; income tax accrued for the current year; stated capital; accumulated earnings; number of employees; and tangible assets other than cash and cash equivalents.
• Table 2 — a list of all the constituent entities of the group included in each aggregation per tax jurisdiction, with the jurisdiction of organisation or incorporation where it differs from the jurisdiction of residence, and main business activities recorded as tick-boxes.
• Table 3 — additional information: the group’s name, the fiscal year concerned, and any further brief explanation the reporting entity considers necessary.

Two caveats on the above. The table numbering here is the EU’s; the OECD original numbers them with Roman numerals. And the Table 2 business-activity tick-box list is longer than the examples that can be given here, so treat any short list of activity types as illustrative rather than complete.

Where the OECD standard stands in 2026

The OECD published Country-by-Country Reporting — Compilation of 2026 Peer Review Reports on 19 October 2026. It is the ninth annual peer review under the Action 13 minimum standard and assessed implementation across 142 jurisdictions that provided relevant legislation or information, across three areas: domestic legal and administrative frameworks, exchange of information, and confidentiality and appropriate use.

The summary records no change to the minimum standard or to the template. That is an absence of any announced change in a summary document rather than a positive confirmation that nothing changed, so it should be read as such.

We are deliberately saying nothing here about the transitional CbCR safe harbour under the Pillar Two rules — its conditions, its tests or its expiry. The governing OECD documents were not retrievable for this post, and a safe harbour is precisely the kind of provision where a half-remembered condition does real damage. Check it at source.

Frequently asked questions

Is the EUR 750 million threshold tested on the entity or the group? The group. Both the OECD guidance and DAC4 measure consolidated group revenue from the consolidated financial statements.

When did public CbCR start applying? Transposition was due by 22 June 2023, with national rules applying at the latest from the first financial year starting on or after 22 June 2024. Actual national implementation varied and is not covered here.

Is public CbCR a tax obligation? No. Directive (EU) 2021/2101 amends the Accounting Directive, making it a company-law disclosure obligation.

How long is there to publish? Twelve months from the balance sheet date of the relevant financial year, under Article 48d.

Build your transfer pricing and reporting knowledge with Learnsignal

Scope tests, filing obligations and the difference between what a tax administration sees and what the public sees are the parts of this area where mistakes are expensive. Our tax and reporting CPD courses cover them in detail. See also our guides to transfer pricing and the OECD method selection hierarchy. The directive itself is published on EUR-Lex.