Deloitte’s 2024 Global Tax Policy Survey analyzed the responses of more than 1,000 tax and finance executives within the Forbes 2000 set of multinational organizations, representing a wide range of industries, organization sizes, and geographies to understand how they are handling the immense changes in the global tax landscape.
In an era being shaped by international tax reform, “increased calls for more tax transparency and environmental sustainability measures, and the rapid advancement of tax digitalization, the survey points to numerous demands competing for attention of the tax function and business at large.”
Amanda Tickel, Deloitte Global Leader, Tax & Legal Policy, said:
“International tax reform to implement a global minimum profits tax continues to dominate tax news headlines, but our survey revealed that tax and finance executives are grappling with other priorities which are demanding even more attention. For 2024, the biggest impact is the increasingly burdensome and complex tax reporting and data collection requirements taxpayers must meet. The survey gives us a valuable insight into how these challenges are going to evolve in the future, and where tax teams will need to adapt.”
Ever-increasing demands for tax reporting has pushed transparency and reporting up as top priority
As various stakeholders require more disclosures “on multinationals’ tax affairs, and as many organizations respond by volunteering more information so that their tax data can be understood in the appropriate context, it should come with little surprise that transparency and reporting ranks as the highest impact of the five policy themes explored in the survey.”
In fact, seven in 10 respondents “expect their public tax transparency disclosures to increase in the coming years, due in part to new public country-by-country reporting (PCbCR) requirements.”
Thirty-seven percent said the “increased disclosures will entail new types of information they don’t currently report.”
On top of the tax reporting requirements, “most (79%) respondents expect to be affected by transparency demand emerging from the climate and sustainability field.”
While most respondents (97%) have “a tax transparency strategy in place, they face challenges in executing it, ranging from providing relevant reporting to senior leadership, to governance and data risks, and understanding the applicable rules.”
Digitalization of tax is high on the agenda
The digitalization of tax was flagged as a key priority.
One of the key elements is the “movement to Tax Administration 3.0, a digitalized model that includes enhanced compliance with less resources. Nine in 10 respondents report at least some progress in their country with this model with respondents expecting Tax Administration 3.0 to bring a range of positive impacts for their business and operations, including improved customer service (42%), a more collaborative relationship with tax authorities (37%), and fewer and more efficient tax audits (36%).”
Conversely, some respondents retained concerns “about increased costs and complexity of digitalization, demonstrating the importance for governments to provide more clarity on what the concept entails and the long-term business benefits.”
The survey also picked up “on the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative AI as an increasingly important factor in the tax world.”
Sixty-six percent of respondents expect AI “to be widely used in tax compliance over the next three years, though many of these respondents (40%) think tax compliance will still involve significant human oversight.”
As businesses explore the most effective and valuable use cases, “the adoption and value creation of AI/GenAI will be largely influenced by how governments choose to regulate it.”