Tax transparency

Last updated: 25/06/2026

In recent years, many tax transparency standards have emerged, primarily created by a range of NGOs. Two of these are starting to have a significant influence:
- GRI207 (Taxation) covers the approach to tax; tax governance, control and risk management; tax stakeholders and country-by-country tax reporting. While on a standalone basis GRI207 is a voluntary standard, it is compulsory for any existing signatories to the wider set of GRI standards for whom tax is a material issue.
- The WEF IBC Core Tax Metric encompasses total tax paid. Expanded Tax Metrics cover additional tax remitted (on behalf of others) and a breakdown of total tax paid and additional tax remitted by country for significant locations.
Other voluntary regimes (such as the Fair Tax Mark in the UK, the global B Team’s “Responsible Tax Principles”) and the Tax Responsibility and Transparency index (benchmark for business in five key areas of tax conduct) continue to have an impact on the tax transparency disclosures of some groups.
The EU and Australian public country-by-country reporting (PCBCR) also drive the broader tax transparency response.
The EU sustainability reporting initiatives, such as the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), while not tax focussed per se, may, in some circumstances, require groups to disclose certain tax information.
A 2026 Deloitte Global Tax Policy Survey revealed that 84% of the respondents expect an increase in public tax disclosure in the next two to three years.
In line with the EU simplification agenda, in February 2026 the EU Council has approved a simplification package for CSRD, narrowing its scope by raising thresholds for company size.
In June, the European Commission (EC) released a proposal for a recast of the Directive on Administrative Cooperation (DAC) into a single streamlined text, aiming to reduce reporting burden by removing overlapping requirements and obligations that are deemed to add little value.
Timing: the above-mentioned voluntary standards have no fixed deadline for adoption, however, groups are increasingly focusing on tax transparency. With respect to the DAC recast, the Irish presidency of the EU Council aims to adopt it by the end of 2026, with a view for an effective date in 2028.