PWC have published the results of a poll they took at their annual Global Tax Symposium. If you just read the press release you'd think there's been real progress towards a more responsible world of taxation. Looking at the detailed poll results gives a better picture. This story emerges from a simple analysis of the poll results:

1. Only 41% of companies have a board approved tax strategy. This shows no real improvement on the result Hendersons published some time ago. In other words, there's no clear sign of progress;
2. Shareholders are the only people tax managers really worry about, with tax authorities coming in second. The rest of the world trails in way behind, with civil society hardly appearing on their radar;
3. There's more accounting regulation a tax director has to comply with now, but still not enough to ensure that the board actually take much interest in what they're doing;
4. Most thought there were still some tax planning opportunities left in their business (which must have been heart-warming for PWC), and;
5. Most would pursue there opportunities whether or not this would create conflict with tax authorities.

PWC have tried to put a positive spin on their findings. I candidly present the above as a more objective interpretation.

But going beyond the superficial interpretation, I think there are some even more worrying trends. Stakeholders, for example, are only of concern to tax directors because the group is expanded to include shareholders. And not all of them even worry about shareholders. Which somewhat proves the point I made recently that companies really are beings quite independent of their ownership which most certainly do pay tax in their won right, out of resources that they think are under their own control. And, when stakeholders were defined society at large and governments were excluded from the list under consideration. Which says quite a lot about PWC's opinion of taxation and CSR.

You've got a long way to go guys.