UK urged to push for more tax transparency from multinationals

LONDON: The UK should push for large multinational companies to reveal more detailed reports on their tax affairs, a panel of lawmakers said.

The tax authority will begin to receive a confidential breakdown of the activities of large corporations doing business in the UK. The problem is that they won’t make public how much tax these multinationals pay in different jurisdictions, according to an emailed report on Friday from parliament’s public accounts committee.

Britain “should lead the global debate for public country-by-country reporting and push for international agreement on its introduction,” the committee said.

Companies including Amazon.com Inc. have been at the Centre of tax disputes with UK lawmakers in recent years and Prime Minister Theresa May has made tackling corporate and individual tax avoidance and evasion a central plank of her plan to “build a country that works for all.”

“It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re Amazon, Google or Starbucks, you have a duty to put something back, you have a debt to your fellow citizens, you have a responsibility to pay your taxes,” May said in a July 11 speech.