Fair Tax Foundation launch partnership with CSR Europe to develop ground-breaking responsible tax benchmarking index


The Fair Tax Foundation will co-partner CSR Europe, the leading European business network for Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, in the development of a new collaborative platform on tax responsibility and transparency. Five multinational business pioneers have committed to support the project, with more hopefully to follow. These include Fair Tax Mark accredited Ørsted and Vattenfall. Together with Enel, Fortum and Grundfos.

Once complete, the toolkit and index will enable companies to:

Work commenced January 2023 and will run for approximately twelve months.

Paul Monaghan, Chief Executive of the Fair Tax Foundation said: “We have gone from a world where hardly anyone wanted to discuss their tax conduct to an explosion of responsible tax initiatives – some with more merit than others. This is good thing, but is starting to create confusion. So we are delighted to work with CSR Europe on this timely project. Back in June 2020, the Fair Tax Foundation published an omni-analysis of each and every responsible tax initiative that we could find, and used it to develop our Global Multinational Business Standard. An update of aspects of this analysis is now merited, especially at a European level given that this part of the world is proving itself to be the hotbed for progress on everything from public country-by-country reporting to tax strategy disclosure.”

Below is the official announcement from CSR Europe. There are still a small number of slots for multinationals who may be interested to get involved as project supporters – please reach out if this is of interest.


CSR Europe Launches New Collaborative Platform on Tax Responsibility and Transparency

Platform members – including Enel, Fortum, Grundfos, Vattenfall, Ørsted – led by CSR Europe in partnership with the Fair Tax Foundation will work together towards the development of a tax index aimed at assessing companies’ performance on tax transparency and responsible tax behaviour.

Over the past years, multinational companies have been under the scrutiny of investors and civil society organisations for their approach and behaviour to taxation. The push for transparency and responsible corporate tax behaviour is here to stay. The upcoming EU public Country-by-Country Reporting Directive, for instance, will require multinational entities operating in the EU to publicly disclose defined tax information on a country-by-country basis.

To align with the new expectations of European policymakers and other stakeholders, CSR Europe is kicking off a new collaborative platform on Tax Responsibility and Transparency aimed at developing a tax index for the assessment of companies’ performances in terms of Tax Transparency and Responsible Tax Behaviour.

Platform members, including Enel, Fortum, Grundfos, Vattenfall and Ørsted, will address the following key challenges:

Members, led by CSR Europe in partnership with the Fair Tax Foundation, will work together to define how to:

To validate its work, the platform will engage key external stakeholders from the private and public sectors – including civil society organisations, NGOs, European policymakers and academia – which will contribute to the work of members by sharing feedback.

Companies interested in the collaborative platform can reach out to CSR Europe to express their interest in joining the current members.

For more information: Contact Project Manager Spyros Perikleous