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.

While voluntary, we encourage businesses to adopt the VTTC. The redesigned VTTC (see related resources) will start from 1 July 2026.

Benefits

Tax transparency helps business 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.

New participants

To become a participant, entities should email taxboard@taxboard.gov.au with:

  • their business’ name
  • whether they are ‘Public CbC reporter’ or a ‘Non‑public CbC reporter’ for VTTC purposes (See Appendix C – Glossary of the VTTC).
  • the first income year they plan to publish a VTTC report.

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 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.

Appendix A has example template formats you can follow. This makes the reports consistent and easy to compare.

We encourage entities to complete the optional elements.

The Board maintains a register of entities that adopted the VTTC. View VTTC participants in data.gov.au’s list of VTTC reports.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) manages a centralised database of links to published VTTC reports on data.gov.au. After publishing a VTTC report, notify the ATO using their instructions.

Read more about how the ATO facilitates the VTTC.

Guidance

The VTTC contains guidance throughout.

The Board asked the Australian Accounting Standards Board to create a guide for:

  • suggested tax reconciliation
  • calculating an effective tax rate.

The draft guidance is a draft appendix to the VTTC [PDF 312 KB Draft appendix to the Tax Transparency Code| DOCX 140 KB Draft appendix to the Tax Transparency Code].

Development and reviews

International and domestic tax transparency continuously changes. The Board will continue monitoring developments. We will revisit the VTTC in the future to keep it relevant.