Australia’s ATO releases first tranche of Public CBC reports

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has released the first group of public country-by-country (Public CBC) reports, covering reporting periods beginning from 1 July 2024.

The disclosures detail large businesses’ operations across the jurisdictions in which they operate, including revenue, profit, income tax, and related financial data.

Under Australia’s Public CBC rules, large businesses with operations in the country must publish specified tax and financial information about their business groups each year.

Companies submit the reports to the ATO, which then publishes them.

ATO acting deputy commissioner Michelle Sams said: “The release of Australia’s first Public CBC reports marks an important milestone in corporate tax transparency.

“These reports provide the public greater visibility of the global operations and tax disclosures of large businesses operating in Australia.”

The reports will be released in stages as they are received and processed by the ATO.

The first batch largely covers entities with a 30 June year end, which aligns with Australia’s standard financial year.

Businesses that are foreign owned often use a 31 December year end and are expected to be included in the next release, ATO said.

Last month, ATO published its annual Corporate Tax Transparency (CTT) report.

Sams said: “While both the CTT report and Public CBC report support tax transparency for large businesses, they provide different insights.

“The CTT report includes Australian total income, taxable income and tax paid sourced from Australian entity income tax returns, whereas Public CBC information is global group information based on consolidated financial statements (or equivalent) and is reported on a jurisdictional basis.

“By way of example, the CTT is information about a single Australian entity – whereas a single Public CBC report could include information about numerous Australian and non-Australian entities within a group.”