Insurance Europe has today published its views on the European Commission’s proposal for the publication of country-by-country reports (CBCR).

While supporting the Commission’s aim to promote fair and efficient corporate taxation in the EU, Insurance Europe said it did not believe that a good case has been made to show that the proposal to introduce a public country-by-country-reporting of tax disclosures via a suggested amendment to the Accounting Directive would achieve these objectives. 

Insurance Europe warned that, in fact, the current proposal actually undermines the objectives of the multilateral agreement on the automatic exchange of country-by-country reports between national tax authorities. As proposed, it may also harm the competitiveness of the EU.  

Insurance Europe also said that the suggested public disclosure of reports on income tax information would not provide meaningful information to interested parties, as it would ignore the existing differences between accounting rules and the non-harmonised tax regimes in different Member States and globally.