TAX AVOIDANCE

That this House notes the increasing ease with which multi-national corporations are shifting substantial profits from high tax to low tax jurisdictions, even to the point of eliminating their tax liabilities in countries where they make huge sales, as instanced by Starbucks which has not paid any tax on its 1.2 billion UK sales in the last three periods for which accounts are available; and calls on the Government to investigate systematically and in depth all such companies known to use such artificial devices to reduce tax liabilities as charging royalties and excessive interest rates on intra-group transactions or grossly inflating prices on internally-traded products to exaggerate allowable costs against tax, and to grant HM Revenue and Customs powers to declare null and void any such transactions which have no genuine economic purpose but are simply designed to avoid tax, to increase the number of tax inspectors whose revenue-increasing capacity has been shown to be far above their own salary, and to seek international agreement to revise the OECD rules on taxation of multi-national companies trading so as to eliminate loopholes and strengthen enforcement.