The Lead Story
Pillar Two Windfall: PwC Rides the Wave of New Reporting Rules
The global minimum tax isn’t even fully live yet, but it’s already fattening PwC’s bottom line. The firm’s tax and legal services revenue jumped this year thanks to “increasingly complex reporting requirements,” International Tax Review reports.
PwC told the outlet that clients are scrambling to prep for the OECD’s 15% Pillar Two minimum tax, hiring the Big Four giant for model-building, data cleanup, and compliance tech. The surge comes as jurisdictions from South Korea to the EU lock in 2024-25 start dates, putting pressure on multinationals to get their books Pillar-ready.
“Companies suddenly need granular, country-level data they’ve never reported before,” a PwC partner said, adding that demand spans advisory, legal structuring, and dispute support. The firm didn’t publish exact figures, but the tax and legal arm was singled out as a top growth engine inside the otherwise audit-heavy network.
The reaction was swift across the profession. Deloitte’s new think-piece, “Tax in a Multilateral World,” notes that Pillar Two is reshaping everything from transfer-pricing models to treasury systems as businesses chase certainty in a fast-fragmenting landscape (Deloitte). Tax pros warn that the learning curve,and the consulting bills,are only getting steeper.
Around the Tax World
- Polish Audits Go Digital, But Not Kinder. A five-year study finds irregularities in 98% of completed tax audits, with customs probes now lasting an average 332 days (International Tax Review).
- Spain in the Hot Seat. Lawyer Robert Amsterdam urged Washington to freeze tax cooperation with Madrid over “retrospective, life-derailing investigations” of expats, unveiling a white paper titled Hacienda vs. The People (PR Newswire).
- HMRC’s Travel-Data Blunder. The U.K. tax authority mistakenly cut child-benefit payments for roughly 35,000 families after misreading travel records, forcing a rapid policy scramble (ICAEW).
- Canada Turns Up the Transfer-Pricing Heat. KPMG warns that the CRA is matching U.S. and EU transparency drives with a renewed audit push on cross-border pricing policies [KPMG]