WHEN DISCLOSURE IS NOT A CHOICE: ESG AND TAX TRANSPARENCY IN CORPORATE REPORTING

This thesis examines how large European energy multinationals communicate tax transparency during the initial year of mandatory public Country-by-Country Reporting (CbCR) under Directive (EU) 2021/2101, and whether differences between voluntary and mandatory reporters are reflected in broader ESG performance. The research is driven by the increasing recognition of taxation as an ESG issue and the need to understand how companies translate regulatory requirements into substantive public communication. A comparative qualitative design is employed, utilizing documentary analysis of 2024 corporate reports, which represent the transitional year prior to full enforcement. The Tax Transparency Disclosure (TTD) Framework is applied to evaluate seven dimensions of transparency, including governance structures, risk management, stakeholder engagement, and ethical framing. Each dimension is manually scored and supplemented with qualitative notes to capture both quantitative completeness and narrative depth. ESG and Social Pillar indicators from the Refinitiv (LSEG) Eikon database are integrated to assess alignment between fiscal transparency and sustainability outcomes. Findings indicate that mandatory public CbCR has standardized the visibility of quantitative tax data but has not equalized the communicative or interpretive quality of disclosures. All six companies disclose jurisdiction-level tax data; however, only the early voluntary adopters: Enel, BP, and Shell embed these figures within coherent explanations that connect taxation to fairness, contribution, value creation, and stakeholder expectations. In contrast, mandatory adopters: TotalEnergies, OMV, and Equinor provide complete but predominantly technical disclosures with limited contextualization, reflecting a compliance-driven rather than socially informed approach to transparency. These reporting differences closely align with sustainability outcomes: firms with higher TTD scores also demonstrate stronger ESG and Social performance, while companies with weaker narrative framing tend to have lower sustainability indicators. The results suggest that voluntary transparency is grounded in ethical intent and stakeholder responsiveness, whereas mandatory transparency risks producing procedural uniformity without substantive meaning. Methodologically, this thesis offers an integrated framework for assessing tax disclosure quality during regulatory transition and demonstrates the value of combining structured document analysis with external ESG metrics. In conclusion, while public CbCR enhances comparability and visibility, genuine accountability emerges only when fiscal data are accompanied by interpretive framing, ethical explanation, and integration within sustainability communication. Narrative transparency remains a critical component of corporate reporting, even under harmonized regulatory requirements.