The Australian public country-by-country (Public CBC) reporting rules are designed to increase multinational tax transparency so the public can better assess whether large groups pay tax where they have real economic activity.
Who is in scope of the Public CBC rules?
The measure applies to CBC reporting parents that are constitutional corporations. A CBC reporting parent must meet several requirements, including:
- It must be the ultimate controlling entity in a group.
- It must reflect annual global income of $1 billion or more in its consolidated financial statements in the preceding year.
- The group must include an Australian resident or a foreign resident operating an Australian permanent establishment.
- The group must have returned Australian-sourced aggregated turnover of at least $10million for the reporting period.
What information will be made publicly available?
Unlike ‘private CBC reports’ shared only between tax administrations, this information will be published as soon as practicable on an Australian Government website. In-scope groups must disclose:
- The names of all entities in the CBC reporting group.
- The group’s ‘approach to tax’.
- For each country of operation: business activities, number of full-time employees, revenue (related and unrelated), profit/loss before tax and income tax expense in the accounts versus cash tax paid.
For Australia and specified jurisdictions like Singapore, Hong Kong and Switzerland, this data must be published on a standalone jurisdictional basis. Information for all other jurisdictions can be aggregated on an optional basis.
Compliance and implementation
The Australian Public CBC rules place all compliance obligations on the CBC reporting parent, and the penalties for late lodgement are severe, with penalties starting at A$165,000 per return filed late, increasing to A$825,000 where the filing remains outstanding for over 16 weeks.
Key timelines
The rules first apply to income years starting on or after 1 July 2024. For a 30 June 2025 year end, the report is due by 30 June 2026. For a 31 December 2025 year end, the report is due by 31 December 2026.
Registration and lodgement
Your CBC reporting parent needs to consider whether to register. While registration is not mandatory, it is required if correspondence with the ATO is needed, such as for lodgement extensions. The report must be provided to the ATO in XML format via email.
Next steps for MNE groups
To prepare for these disclosures, we recommend that you:
- Consider the applicability of the measure in conjunction with your CBC reporting parent.
- Assess the data points in your private CBC report and identify additional disclosures required, such as the ‘approach to tax’ disclosure.
- Ensure any information not readily available from the private CBC report is collated.
If you need assistance with data collation, conversion into XML or submission to the ATO, please reach out to your William Buck team.
