As the FT notes this morning:
A crackdown on multinationals shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions has increased the amount of tax HM Revenue & Customs is disputing with UK companies, new data have revealed.
They added:
A freedom of information request seen by the Financial Times shows HMRC challenged large UK businesses about liabilities totalling £20bn in 2019 – up sharply from £12.7bn in 2015. The increase comes after a global outcry over companies avoiding tax by moving profits to low-tax jurisdictions.
And they note:
“HMRC is under growing pressure to increase tax revenues,” said Melissa Christopher, partner at accountancy firm Fitzgerald & Law, who made the FOI request. “HMRC is stepping up its focus on UK headquartered multinationals, which it clearly feels are continuing to make widespread use of artificial arrangements to divert profits into low tax jurisdictions.”
I would add that it seems to be appropriate to ask how they can do this now. I have just one response, and it is that they now have country-by-country reporting data.
As I noted recently (with thanks to the Tax Justice Network for doing the number-crunching) this data, which has been available since 2016, has now shown that maybe $1 trillion of profits have been shifted by multinational corporations into tax havens. HMRC has clearly picked up on this and is taking the issue on.
That is what I intended when I created CBCR in 2003. It's good to see that it's working.
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[…] There is more on recent developments in CBCR here and there is a lot on the subject from the blog here. Plus, today there is very clear evidence published that CBCR is working. […]
We live in hope that HMRC can begin to do something useful.
We can hope that it does but I fear it will be pilloried and punished most severely if it does so.
HMRC have access to the “real” accounts of real companies, which is far better than Micky Mouse stuff such as CbyC which, obviously, ignores capital and funding structures and all those things that make it possible to assess taxes in a legally justifiable way. CbyC is just a convenient fiction. If you buy resources in Spain, process them in Italy and sell them in Belgium, how does CbyC help anybody understand what is going on?
You clearly do not understand CBCR
And HMRC do not have access to accounts outside the UK – hence the need for CBCR
And why the OECD adop0ted it
They might know rather more than you
But you say in another piece
“But the serious tax evasion is by people in white vans” why then aren’t HMRC chasing these people, especially as the FT article makes clear UK Businesses/ Large multinationals are “avoiding” tax not “evading” it?
Excellent question
Deliberate underfunding means it is n to poossible