Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to tackle tax evasion by multinational companies.

HMRC’s role is to collect the right amount of tax due under UK law. HMRC work to make sure large businesses, like all other taxpayers, pay all the taxes due under UK law.

In line with HMRC’s published criminal investigation policy, while HMRC reserve the right to undertake criminal investigations, it is their policy to deal with fraud by use of cost-effective civil fraud investigations. This applies to multinational enterprises (MNEs) as it does to other types of organisations and taxpayers.

In order to address tax risks which particularly relate to MNEs, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) have over 450 employees working on international issues including transfer pricing, diverted profits tax, controlled foreign companies and cross border debt. This continuing programme of investigations into potential tax avoidance, and sometimes tax evasion, by MNEs has helped secure around £6 billion from MNEs between April 2015 when Diverted Profits Tax was introduced and March 2020.