Country-by-country reporting: international experience of implementation

Abstract

Considering the tasks set for Ukraine in frames of combating tax evasion of multinational enterprises, it is extremely important to bring the provisions of national legislation in line with international rules of tax administration. This primarily concerns the creation of institutional conditions in order to increase the financial flows transparency of multinational enterprises for tax administrations and enable them to obtain necessary information for identifying and assessing transfer pricing risks.Nowadays, more than 100 countries prepare a country-by-country report of an international group of companies, which discloses data on activities of certain enterprises in accordance with the requirements of national legislation and the unified standard of country-by-country reporting, approved by the OECD [1]. However, the analysis of domestic practice of reporting by countries of international group of companies, as well as the study of other regulations, which application allows metropolitan countries to ensure the transparent level of taxation of their multinational corporations, indicates the need for further improvement of domestic mechanisms for counteracting tax base erosion and exchange of information obtained in the framework of international exchange. This fact actualizes a chosen research topic. It is revealed that information disclosed in country-by-country reports gives the possibility for tax administrations to assess high risks of transfer pricing. In turn, the development of the mechanism for ensuring confidentiality and appropriate use of such reports will oblige taxpayers to careful adhere to transfer pricing rules and mandatory tax information exchange. The investigation of international experience in frames of implementation of uniform standards for the disclosure of information on income distribution and tax payments suggests the importance of country-by-country reporting. And identification of main trends in the field of international initiatives on issues of disclosure of income distribution information by groups of enterprises brings Ukraine closer to the consistent implemen­tation of this approach in practice of international groups of companies.