The redesigned VTTC will start for the year beginning 1 July 2026.
The Board of Taxation (BoT) has completed a redesign of the Voluntary Tax Transparency Code (VTTC), which provides principles and minimum standards to guide medium and large businesses in publicly disclosing tax information.
The BoT, responsible for developing and administering the VTTC, updated and simplified the code to better reflect the current tax transparency environment, including:
- Australian initiatives: public country-by-country (CbC) reporting, Consolidated Entity Disclosure Statements (CEDS) for Australian public companies, and corporate tax transparency reporting by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
- International developments: Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standard 207 and EU public CbC reporting.
Background
The Voluntary Tax Transparency Code (VTTC) is a set of principles and “minimum standards”. It helps entities disclose their tax information.
Australian and global tax transparency changed significantly since the VTTC’s development in 2016. The Board of Taxation followed developments for Significant Global Entities including:
- public Country‑by‑Country (CbC) reporting in Australia
- similar global tax transparency initiatives
- wider environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting.
The Board redesigned the VTTC in 2025. They updated and simplified it to achieve purposeful transparency.
The redesign complements and minimises duplication with the CbC reporting regime. It gives entities that aren’t public CbC reporters a way to report their tax affairs. This reduces reporting requirements for them.
Review
The Treasurer tasked the Board with reviewing the VTTC in August 2024. The review included how to:
- supplement policy developments in global tax transparency
- encourage best practice tax transparency reporting.
Voluntary Tax Transparency Code
The Voluntary Tax Transparency Code (VTTC) is a set of principles and ‘minimum standards’. It encourages entities to disclose their tax information. The VTTC complements other transparency initiatives like public Country‑by‑Country (CbC) reporting. It gives entities outside these initiatives a framework for reporting.
Benefits
Tax transparency helps businesses and the wider community.
For entities
The VTTC allows entities to explain their tax affairs in a thorough, clear and accessible way. This can:
- minimise tax misunderstandings
- build public trust through good governance
- show commitment to responsible and ethical tax practices with objective evidence
- attract, retain and give confidence to investors by reducing information gaps.
For the community
The VTTC makes businesses’ tax information visible to the public. It allows them to view and compare entities. This can:
- inform about business compliance with Australian taxation laws
- demonstrate that entities are paying the right amount of tax
- build confidence in the tax system
- reinforce Australia’s voluntary compliance culture
- discourage entities from avoiding tax aggressively.
Reporting
The public generally focuses on tax affairs of large businesses. This includes Australian‑headquartered businesses and foreign multinationals.
The VTTC targets larger entities. Most operate through company structures or entities treated as companies for Australian tax purposes. The Board designed the VTTC around these structures.
Some entities may operate using non‑corporate entities. These include partnerships, trusts and superannuation funds. We encourage them to adopt VTTC principles as far as possible and give qualitative explanations as needed.
The VTTC is flexible on entity grouping and formatting. This aims to reduce compliance costs.
There may be some entities within an accounting consolidated group which are subject to the VTTC. The VTTC does not tailor rules for different structures.
Groups can decide which entities are the disclosers. They can choose the level of aggregation or grouping of entities.
For example, groups can choose to make:
- one disclosure covering all relevant entities
- individual disclosures by an entity or groups of entities.
Some entities with complex structures create multiple sets of financial reports for their different parts. These entities can include multiple entry consolidated (MEC) groups. This may impact the way they choose to make their VTTC disclosures.
Groups should match their disclosures to their natural accounting and reporting systems. This presents the information in a useful and easy‑to‑understand way.
Roll out
The redesigned VTTC will start for the year beginning 1 July 2026. Early adoption is optional. Entities that already reported on their 2026 financial year do not need to report again. This prevents duplication or confusion for participants with different reporting periods.
