Parent Company Definition for Toxics Release Inventory Reporting
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Rule Summary
In October 2022, EPA formally defined “parent company” for Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reporting purposes. This action:
- requires facilities to consult TRI’s standardized list of parent company names, which address issues such as common abbreviations, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling;
- allows EPA to clarify existing reporting guidance and provide additional reporting guidance for facilities owned by public entities, multiple owners, corporate subsidiaries, and foreign entities.
Additionally, effective for Reporting Year 2023 (forms due by July 1, 2024), this action requires all TRI facilities to report their foreign parent company if applicable.
This rule, which requires facilities to use the standardized parent company list, reduces the amount of effort required by EPA and TRI reporting facilities to verify accurate parent company name submissions and ensures identical formatting in EPA’s data tools.
This rule clarifies existing regulations for reporting facilities, while more closely aligning this data element with other EPA reporting programs (e.g., Chemical Data Reporting). This change improves the agency’s data quality and simplifies the reporting process for those facilities that report under multiple programs. Use of the standardized conventions also reduces the amount of effort required by EPA and TRI reporting facilities to verify accurate parent company name submissions.
Rule History
Although facilities reporting to TRI must identify their parent company in annual reporting forms, no formal regulatory definition of the data element existed prior to this rulemaking. Among the facilities reporting to TRI are those with complicated corporate ownership structures. Prior to this rulemaking, EPA and reporting facilities expended considerable effort each year to clarify how the parent company data element was interpreted. A formal definition of parent company allows EPA to address various corporate ownership scenarios explicitly and reduces the reporting burden caused by regulatory uncertainty.
