Finance Bill

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Mike Wood

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

That is a very powerful point. This is why transparency matters. If people know that they are being taken for a ride, they do not have to use an organisation that uses a Luxembourg structure, which is a common kind of intermediate structure for pan-European tax planning to organise things so that no tax need be paid.

This is not just about Avis. I had a look at the accounts of Hertz, another large US car rental company that also does not seem to have paid any tax in the past few years. It is hard to tell how it is doing that, and I had to look at the accounts in very great detail. It has some let-out whereby the company does not have to report related-party transactions. One would think that it may well be renting its car fleets through the Luxembourg company or the Netherlands BV that it uses. Hertz uses a Netherlands BV and Avis uses a Luxembourg company to get money out of the UK tax net so that it is not subject to tax on any profit. However, I cannot tell, because we do not have that level of reporting. That is why country-by-country reporting is important, not just as a tax concept but as an accounting concept, so that one can see where the money has gone. Similarly, inter-company loans and borrowings are often at the much higher rate. That is certainly the case with Avis, which was paying more in its inter-company loans than in its borrowings to the bank. That, too, caused me a level of concern. There seemed perhaps to be some trademark royalties in there, or some royalties to do with its internal IT and computer systems, but it was hard to tell because we do not have that granularity in the accounts.

We ought to have a greater level of knowledge, a greater level of reporting, and a greater level of understanding of how money is being paid, the taxes that are due, and the nature of the planning that is being undertaken so that our laws are more robust and we can make sure that everyone in this nation pays a fair share of tax, be they the cleaner or the largest enterprise that is trading. It matters for the rule of law, for a fair and open market, and for a level competitive playing field that all businesses and enterprises are treated the same.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

As a Conservative, I believe that taxes, whether direct or indirect, need to be kept as low as possible, consistent with the need to raise finances for our vital public services and for our national security. Unnecessarily high taxation not only strangles growth and development but means Government taking from those who have earned money, whether through labour, innovation, or capital.

However, the flipside of keeping tax levels low is that everybody must pay their fair share. Aggressive tax avoidance, bending the rules of the tax system to gain an advantage that Parliament never intended, means that a heavier burden falls on others, who are able to keep less of the money that they have earned. This Government are rightly committed to supporting businesses through low taxes—that is why corporation tax is being cut again to 17%—but those taxes do have to be paid.

This Bill therefore addresses many of the ways that companies use to avoid paying their fair level of tax. That includes the amendments that we are debating, tabled by the Government, to reform hybrid mismatches. The amendments will reduce aggressive tax planning, typically involving a multinational group. The introduction of these rules will, in essence, remove the tax advantage arising from the use of hybrid entities and instruments, and ought to encourage more businesses to adopt less complicated, more transparent cross-border investment structures. I look forward to similar rules being introduced by other jurisdictions. However, in line with OECD regulations, the Bill contains provisions for counteraction in the UK where the other country does not counteract the mismatch within its own hybrid mismatch rules. The Bill introduces the new penalty of 60% of tax due that was announced in the Budget, to be charged in all cases successfully tackled by the general anti-avoidance rule.

Government amendments 136 and 137 help to ensure that the changes announced in the Budget work as intended, cracking down further on unscrupulous and aggressive tax avoidance. I agree with the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) on country-by-country reporting, as well as those raised so regularly by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). There is widespread and growing agreement that there is a need to move to country-by-country reporting so that the information is out there and available both to national tax authorities and to the wider public. That brings us back to the question of whether the best way to achieve that is for individual countries to act unilaterally or for the UK to move in partnership with our international allies and through a range of international organisations both within and beyond Europe.