Trevor Incerti (U. Amsterdam, Dept. Pol. Econ.) & Raphaëlle Soffe (Inst. Fiscal Stud.), Anticipatory Effects of Corporate Tax Shaming: Evidence from the European Union, IFS Working Paper 26/19 (Mar. 5, 2026):

Offshore wealth is estimated at 10% of global GDP. To curb tax avoidance, policymakers have adopted tax transparency reforms. We analyze anticipatory effects associated with the EU’s Directive on Public Country-by-Country Reporting, which mandates that large multinational corporations disclose key financial data starting in 2026. . . .

Firms subject to higher media scrutiny and with ESG scores increased their effective tax rates by 5-8 percentage points (pp) after the announcement of the Directive in 2021. In contrast, we find that banks, which are exempt from the Directive, decreased their tax rates by more than 7 pp. We point to changes in the media spotlight and NGO scrutiny to explain, in part, the heterogeneity in responses across industries.