Global firms paying little or not tax insulting British businesses, say UK's MPs

Global firms in the UK that paid little or no tax were an "insult" to British businesses, according to a committee of MPs.

According to Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) needed to be "more aggressive and assertive in confronting corporate tax avoidance".

Multinationals such as Starbucks and Amazon have been slammed for paying little or no tax even as they made hundreds of million of pounds in sales in the UK.

Starbucks, for instance, grossed sales of nearly £400 million in the UK last year, but it paid no corporation tax at all, thanks to the fact that the bulk of the money it earned in the UK was transferred to a sister company in the Netherlands by way of royalty payments.

According to HMRC it already ensured that international companies paid the tax due "in accordance with UK tax law".

The influential committee's report comes after it heard from executives from Starbucks, Google and Amazon in November about the amount of corporation tax the companies had paid in the UK.