[Revision] Taxation in Sustainability Reports – Analysis of Reporting Standards and Empirical Evidence in German Speaking Countries

DescriptionThe proposed research aims at (1) providing a snapshot of current legal provisions and reporting standards on tax-related disclosure in sustainability (CSR) reports as well as (2) of their application by multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the German-speaking countries (or any other country you wish to analyse).

For the first research goal, it is expected to provide a legal (normative) analysis of the legal provisions on tax-related reporting in financial reports / sustainability reports which are in force in the countries to be analysed in the empirical part of the study. Further, also the most common standards for CSR reporting and their incorporation of tax-related content are expected to be covered. Starting points are:

– Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), especially the new GRI 207:Tax standard (https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/standards-development/topic-standard-project-for-tax/)

– OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (https://www.oecd.org/corporate/mne/) à (in the call I mistakenly referred to this standard as to be issued by the UN, so don’t get confused)

– Australian Tax Transparency Code (TTC) (https://taxboard.gov.au/current-activities/corporate-tax-transparency-code-and-register#:~:text=the%20TTC%20was%20developed%20by,in%20aggressive%20tax%20avoidance%3B%20and)

For the second research goal, it is expected to analyse the annual reports / sustainability reports of MNEs in Germany / Austria / Switzerland / Liechtenstein (here, it is ok to focus on the companies listed in the respective country benchmark index, so DAX in DE / ATX in AT / SMI in CH, and the three to four biggest companies in FL) and to provide evidence on whether these companies disclose tax-related information in their reports and if so, which information is disclosed. Prof Dr Inga Hardeck has done some work in this regard already and has published two papers.