EU Public Country-by-Country Reporting Goes Live: First Tax Filing Deadlines, First Frictions

From the end of June 2026, in-scope groups with a Spanish parent or a qualifying Spanish subsidiary or branch had to file their first report under the EU public country-by-country reporting (pCbCR) regime, detailing key financial and tax data on a country-by-country basis for the 2025 financial year. The regime is set out in EU Directive 2021/2101 (the Directive), adopted almost five years ago. It requires in-scope groups to publish their first reports within twelve months of the end of financial years starting on or after June 2024. However, Spain has opted for a shorter six-month deadline, meaning an initial batch of these reports has now been published and is the first real test of the regime in practice. This is a good moment to recap which groups are in scope, how national implementation of the regime diverges and why groups headquartered outside the EU should pay particular attention.

What is the pCbCR regime?

The Directive aims to increase corporate transparency and public scrutiny of the tax affairs of multinational groups operating in the EU. It exists alongside the “non-public” CbCR regime under OECD BEPS Action 13, under which reports are only exchanged between tax authorities. Both regimes apply to groups with consolidated revenues of at least EUR 750 million, but only the pCbCR regime makes a defined subset of the data public.

Which entities does the pCbCR regime apply to?

The pCbCR regime applies to multinational enterprises with consolidated revenues exceeding EUR 750 million in each of the last two consecutive financial years. Two situations should be distinguished:

• EU parent: Where the group’s parent entity is established in the EU, it prepares and publishes the pCbCR report for the whole multinational enterprise.
• Non-EU parent: Where the group’s parent entity is established outside the EU, the obligation is triggered through the group’s EU subsidiaries and branches, but only if there is at least one “medium-sized or large” EU subsidiary (or a qualifying branch). What is classified as “medium-sized” is itself a matter of national law.

The pCbCR report itself requires the disclosure of a country-by-country breakdown of key financial and tax data, including revenues, profit before tax, tax accrued and paid, and employee numbers, broken down separately for each EU Member State in which the group operates, regardless of the size of its entities there, and for jurisdictions on the EU’s “black” and “grey” lists of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes, with the rest of the world aggregated. To illustrate, a multinational enterprise operating in Germany, Anguilla (on the EU “black” list), the US and Japan must disclose full, separate data sheets for Germany and Anguilla, but can aggregate its US and Japanese figures under a single “rest of the world” line item. 

EU Member States may allow groups to defer, for up to five years and with justification, items that would be seriously prejudicial to their commercial position. Data concerning “black” and “grey” list jurisdictions cannot be deferred. In the above example, while a temporary deferral might be available for sensitive German data, the Anguillan operations would have to be fully disclosed from day one without exception.

Has the pCbCR regime been implemented consistently across the EU?

The Directive sets out a common implementation baseline, but gives EU Member States discretion on several points, for instance whether groups may be exempted from publishing on their own website if the report is instead made freely accessible through a commercial register. Other choices, however, lie with the multinational enterprise itself. Rather than having to rebuild the report from scratch, it may draw on the data already prepared for its “non-public” CbCR report, provided it discloses the method chosen to prepare the report and applies it consistently.

For multinational enterprises headquartered outside the EU, the Directive offers a practical alternative to filing separately in every EU Member State where the multinational enterprise has a presence . This allows the parent entity to publish the pCbCR report on its own website and designate a single EU subsidiary or branch to make the filing locally(a filing hub). All other EU entities are then released from their own publication obligation. However, this exemption only applies if the parent’s report is consistent with the Directive’s content requirements for the multinational enterprise as a whole, not merely its EU operations. 

As the Directive does not state which EU Member State’s law governs that assessment, other EU Member States in which the multinational enterprise has entities could, in principle, challenge a report filed through a filing hub elsewhere on that basis. The choice of filing hub is therefore not a purely administrative question.

What are the implications for non-compliance with the pCbCR regime?

Where a non-EU parent does not prepare the required pCbCR report or provide the underlying data, the pCbCR obligation does not fall away; instead it “escalates”. In this situation, each in-scope EU subsidiary or branch is required to formally request the necessary information from the parent. If the parent still does not provide the information, the subsidiary must draw up and publish its own pCbCR report covering all information in its possession, obtained or acquired, together with a mandatory statement that the parent has not made the necessary information available. 

However, in practice, neither step is straightforward. The scope of “information in its possession, obtained or acquired” extends beyond the subsidiary's own standalone data. It can include any data relating to other entities of the multinational enterprise to which the subsidiary has factual access, including, for instance, data from consolidation reporting packages or internal management accounts. What falls within that scope requires judgment, and the subsidiary’s management remains responsible for the report.

Beyond the EU: Australian pCbCR regime

Australia has also introduced its own pCbCR regime, which applies to financial years beginning on or after 1 July 2024. Reports must be filed with the Australian Tax Office within twelve months of the end of the reporting period. The threshold is significantly lower than the EU’s EUR 750 million revenue threshold, with multinational enterprises with global consolidated income of AUD 1 billion (approximately EUR 620 million) or more and at least AUD 10 million of Australian-sourced income falling in scope. As the two regimes differ in content and neither recognises the other, multinational enterprises within the scope of both will need two distinct reports and good strategic alignment.

What’s next?

As many deadlines for pCbCR reports will fall due at the end of this year, the coming months will show how the remaining EU Member States apply the pCbCR regime in practice and how some of the open questions it raises will be resolved. Multinational enterprises in scope, and groups with non-EU parents in particular, will want to confirm the implementation status in each relevant EU Member State, map the applicable deadlines and thresholds and settle their filing strategy well ahead of the first/next reporting cycle.

If you would like to discuss any of the points raised in this blog post in further detail, please contact the authors or your usual Freshfields contact.

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