Corporate Tax Avoidance

Debate between Mark Field and John Pugh

Monday 7th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

I do. Andy Street, the managing director of John Lewis, has made that point, but it obviously applies to many of the smaller independent companies. I represent a central London seat where a lot of big businesses are based and operate. Nothing is more important than encouraging independents, whether they are restaurants, wine bars or book shops, rather than just relying on big multinationals. No one wants to see all our high streets entirely dominated by large international corporations, many of which may involve themselves in what is currently regarded as aggressive tax avoidance.

[John Pugh]

The hon. Gentleman said that retrospective taxation is a threat. Does not the previous Government’s pre-approval scheme, which puts proposals through the Treasury to find out whether they are sound, get round that and remove that fear?

[Mark Field]

Not entirely, because it does not work as well as it should. There is no doubt that this is going to be a much more high-profile issue, and I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about my suggestion.

The underlying lesson is that the UK tax code and regime remains far too complicated. The godfather of tax avoidance is complexity and uncertainty in the system. When even tax experts find it impossible to understand the workings of the tax code, people begin to question whether everyone is really paying their fair share. This, in turn, creates a sense of greater acceptability in the avoiding and evading of tax. Furthermore, a complicated and opaque tax system will always be vulnerable to misrepresentation, particularly by the media, and that again weakens confidence and encourages further avoidance. People think, “If Amazon can get away with not paying its fair share, why should I bother to stump up?” I can understand why that is a general sentiment, but it frustrates many of the corporates that, as the hon. Member for Redcar said, have paid in an open and transparent manner and will ultimately undermine their whole business framework.

Government can make piecemeal efforts to address particular instances of avoidance—they can play catch-up to a certain extent—but responses tend to involve making the entire system far more complex, thereby reinforcing the very factors that have driven avoidance in the first place, displacing the activity and giving rise to a whole set of new avoidance techniques. Instead, the Government need to take an entirely different and fresh approach. They should look at how they can overhaul the entire system so that avoidance and evasion offer a similar, smaller reward and will therefore be seen as far less acceptable. Fundamentally, that can mean only lower taxes and a radically simplified tax code. For example, a single income tax applicable to income, however it is received, at the same single rate is the best way of stripping out of the system any incentive to avoid income tax. A simpler tax code would also free up HMRC resources to concentrate on tackling the real problem of tax evasion while making transgressions easier to identify.

It has been a pleasure to make a brief contribution to this debate on an important issue to which we must all return. However, I am concerned that too much of the rhetoric coming from this place almost suggests a sense of powerlessness that gives rise to the view that there is an aggressive anti-business approach in this country. We do need to have a thriving business sector. Global businesses can, of course, choose where they locate their business. We should be proud in this country of having a track record of being open to business, but I also accept that we want to ensure that businesses pay their fair share, because we have a huge deficit and a huge debt that has to be paid off if we are not to burden future generations.

I hope that we will look at the whole issue with that in mind, but above all I hope that the Minister will take on board the idea that HMRC needs to have an approach that is much more open to the pre-clearance I referred to. We must also, as a matter of urgency, look at the complications in our tax code that are allowing some of the high-profile avoidance to take place.