Transparency initiatives

We constantly review our tax disclosures for compliance, taking into account transparency initiatives. We also provide constructive input to industry groups and international organisations, such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and the B Team Responsible Tax Working Group (B Team).

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has set out Sustainability Reporting Guidelines that seek to help companies report more transparently on their environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance.

In 2021, the GRI introduced the GRI 207 standard which encourages companies to publicly and comprehensively disclose country-by-country corporate income tax payments. GRI 207 provides best practice reporting guidance. We have publicly disclosed country-by-country income tax payments, according to OECD guidelines, since we published our Tax Contribution Report for 2018.

Shell seeks to meet the mandatory elements of the GRI 207 requirements. As to the GRI 207 requirement for companies to report non-aggregated country data for entities that are consolidated, we follow OECD rules and report aggregated data.

In 2021, at the World Economic Forum, Shell joined a global coalition of businesses to report on a range of ESG performance factors. These Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics comprise 21 disclosures which are mapped to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. One of the core metrics is for companies to disclose their total tax borne.

Shell has worked with the largest employers’ organisation in the Netherlands, the VNO-NCW, on an initiative to improve tax governance and transparency for companies listed in that country.

In May 2022, the VNO-NCW published the Tax Governance Code (TGC), which Shell helped initiate and develop. Given the scale of our activities in the Netherlands, we have voluntarily signed up to the TGC.

The TGC is based on existing transparency initiatives such as the B Team Responsible Tax Principles, the Global Reporting Initiative and the World Economic Forum Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics. Our tax activities therefore already largely comply with the TGC. We will continue to review and improve our tax disclosures so that they are meaningful to our stakeholders.