Corporate Tax Avoidance

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Ian Swales

Monday 7th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ian Swales]

That is an interesting idea and I thank the hon. Gentleman for the suggestion. HMRC needs to look much more closely at companies that have that type of business model. I agree that we need to start making some presumptions.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Is it not the case that for physical goods, Amazon would have to account for VAT in the UK? The issue is that for electronic goods, it accounts for VAT in Luxembourg, so Luxembourg is eating our VAT lunch.

[Ian Swales]

That could well be the case, and I shall speak about that later, too.

The person who wrote to me saying that they could not get a VAT number for the iPad they bought for business purposes was told that Amazon was unable to provide one. Had that been made clear to the buyer, they would have gone elsewhere to get a lower net price. Who knows, they might even have gone to Comet.

Amazon’s turnover in Europe is €7 billion. The gross VAT on that, even at Luxembourg’s lower rate of 15%, would be more than €1 billion. Where is it paid? That would be €2,000 a head for every man, woman and child in Luxembourg, but I would guess that is not paid at such a rate. I would also guess that Amazon’s UK order fulfilment subsidiary pays little or no VAT. I ask the Minister urgently to investigate how the business model operates.

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) on securing it. I wish to discuss an area that has not been so deeply explored this evening, although it is the area where we are not as powerless as we are in so many areas of this debate because of international obligations. I wish to focus on companies in receipt of money from taxpayers under Government contracts.

I have undertaken a study of technology companies that benefit from taxpayers’ money under Government contracts and have found that Oracle, Xerox, Dell, CSC and Symantec paid no corporation tax whatsoever last year, despite earning more than £474 million from Government contracts and having a UK turnover of £7 billion. Overall, my study of 10 technology companies in receipt of more than £1.8 billion of taxpayers’ money found that they paid just £78 million in taxes on UK earnings of just over £17.5 billion of turnover. On the basis of group profitability—we are looking at the consolidated international group here—the 10 technology companies would have made more than £3.3 billion in profits in the UK, resulting in a tax liability of £879 million. The UK tax actually paid was just £78 million, so, according to my research, the tax gap was £801 million.

We are seeing big business tax avoidance on an industrial scale. To me, it is unacceptable, unethical and irresponsible. Hard-pressed families are struggling to get by and to pay their taxes—and they do pay their taxes—so it is quite wrong that highly profitable businesses abuse our tax system. We urgently need reform. No Government contracts should be awarded to businesses that are fleecing our tax system, and the Government should examine how much UK tax companies pay when deciding who gets plum Government contracts. If taxpayers’ money and a Government contract are being awarded, we should look at the taxpayers’ money we are paying out and the tax money that we get back when we assess the value for the nation of awarding a particular contract. If, for example, a Government contract for £500 million is awarded to a computer company, it should be asked what tax it pays. If it pays zero tax in the UK, and another company is paying £40 million in tax in the UK and says that it will do the work for £520 million, the balance of best value shifts. We should consider the question holistically, rather than simply thinking about how much the contract should be let for.

[Ian Swales]

The hon. Gentleman refers to a point that I made. Does he agree that if we are asked to give a Government contract to a company that makes no profit, we should take a view about that company’s long-term future? We should play it at its own game and ask whether, if it does not make any money, it will be around for the long term.

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, but we all know the reality. We all know that companies are using Luxembourg sandwiches and parking profits in Bermuda while claiming that they are sending them back to the States, as the IP suddenly is not in any intellectual property territories outside the United States. I find that unacceptable.

Let us take Oracle as an example. The company had a turnover of about £1.4 billion and a global operating margin of 32%, so its UK projected profits should have been about £446 million. Its declared profits in the UK, however, were basically nothing and it did not pay any tax whatsoever. I regard that with concern, because its Government contract earnings were about £42 million.

Even more concerning was the fact that a small amount of tax was paid by Microsoft, which is interesting as it has about £700 million from Government contracts and paid £19 million in the UK on a turnover of £2.35 billion. It has a global operating margin of 40%, so if we apply the consolidated operating margin to the UK we can see that its projected profits in the UK would be about £945 million. Its projected tax would have been about £246 million. I am not saying that Microsoft should not have some wriggle room for the fact that its IP was generated outside the UK, but when we award Government contracts we should take into account how much tax will be paid in the UK by the person to whom it is awarded. There are difficulties with that under European procurement rules, but we could have a box on the procurement form asking how much corporation tax and how much in PAYE the company anticipated paying in the UK in relation to that contract. That would enable us to assess best value in awarding Government contracts. We could and should consider that.

I am particularly concerned about IBM, which turns over about £4 billion in the UK but has a global operating margin of 16%, which means that its UK projected profits should have been about £642 million. Its declared profits in the UK, however, were about £327 million. Again, the tax gap is substantial and rather than the projected UK tax take of £167 million, only £41 million of tax was paid. We have a shifting and sliding in that the amount of tax we are getting is rather less than one might expect, even if we take into account the question of IP being based elsewhere and not being generated in the UK. We need to consider that more deeply and should consider the whole question of royalties paid for IP as well as licensing fees.

We should see how we can make the corporation tax system in this country flatter and much simpler by getting rid of a lot of the deductions that enable our tax system to be flouted. That would bring the rate down and give the UK a system with even lower tax than we already have.

I pay tribute to the work that the Government have done; I am merely trying to advance the argument, the discussion and the debate. We have a Chancellor who has started to take real and positive action in the OECD to start the discussion on how to change the international rules. We have a Prime Minister who is leading an international summit in Northern Ireland and making tax, including international tax, a key priority. The Government have taken tax very seriously, and rightly so. Over the past 15 years, the amount of income tax paid by the working nation has gone up by about 80% whereas the amount of tax paid by business has gone up by just 6%.

The previous Government were very keen on the whole prawn cocktail circuit; they were keen to be close to big business and to let it off the hook. It is well known that the former Prime Minister and his adviser, now the shadow Chancellor, were keen that the Revenue took a softly, softly approach to big business. I think we all feel that it has gone too far, and it is time to take international as well as domestic action and to be much firmer on big businesses that do not pay their fair share.

We have a deficit to clear. We need the revenue, so we need to be firmer, but we also need a system that has a level playing field, where there is a lower, more globally competitive rate that makes it more attractive for businesses to set up and trade in Britain whether they are domestic or foreign. The way forward is to start an honest and open debate about bringing in a flatter tax system in the UK and taking the rate of corporation tax right down, so that hopefully it will be even lower than in Ireland.