Tax Avoidance

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bishop of Oxford

Wednesday 29th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Baroness makes a sound point. It is just too early to make those sorts of assessments. I want to pick up on the point about digital companies. We have introduced the digital services tax, which came into play on 1 April this year; it is a 2% tax on the revenues which search engines and social media platforms derive if they generate more than £2 billion over the next five years. We have made a start on this but, as the noble Baroness will probably know, these things need international collaboration. If there are excessive profits over the next few months, we will of course review things.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I am sure the Minister is aware that 80% of the population believes that registering a company abroad in a tax haven to avoid paying full UK tax is wrong. At a time of unprecedented social solidarity, would it not help to cement that solidarity if the Government made it clear that they will offer bailouts only to companies that do not follow this practice? After all, France, Poland and Denmark have done that. It would be sad if we stayed a long way behind those countries. If I may, I will send the Minister a list of five criteria drawn up by the fair tax alliance to help the Government to make fair decisions in this area.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I take on board the noble and right reverend Lord’s points, and I would be interested to see the five criteria that he mentioned. I reiterate that the thrust of our approach has been to support businesses that are active in this country with premises and people. In a way, our approach is quite similar to that of Poland, because we require that foreign businesses have a permanent establishment here. I reassure the noble and right reverend Lord that we have taken a huge amount of action over the past 10 years to clamp down on poor tax practice.