Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate his Department has made of the amount of UK tax which was lost to tax avoidance practices adopted by multinational technology companies in (a) 2011, (b) 2012 and (c) 2013.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) do not publish information on the tax lost to avoidance by particular sectors of the economy.

HMRC publish estimates of the tax gap in Measuring Tax Gaps each year. The 2014 edition (published on 16 October 2014) presents a time series of tax gaps from 2005-06 to 2012-13, which can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps

HMRC has also produced an illustrative breakdown of the tax gap by behaviour, including avoidance, for several years including 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13.

Previous editions of ‘Measuring Tax Gaps’ can be accessed at the same link given above.