My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 180. It seems a long time since we were in Grand Committee debating the Bill: quite a lot of things have happened since. I am sure the Committee would wish me to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, to her position. I wish her a degree of permanence—at least until the next election. Of course, she still has some amendments in her name to come. I know we may have debated them, but it is her opportunity to re-educate her department and come back with rather more robust responses than she received from the noble Lord, Lord True, although I express my thanks to the noble Lord for his stewardship of the Bill and his willingness to engage in debate with your Lordships on this important legislation.
I move on to my amendment. A few months ago, the Centre for International Corporate Tax Responsibility and Research and TaxWatch published a report on Amazon’s most profitable segment, its cloud computing business, which they argue is increasingly indirectly
supported by taxpayers through hundreds of billions of dollars and pounds in government contracts around the world. In the UK, it said that Amazon’s cloud computing business won almost £600 million in government contracts between 2018 and 2021. It also highlighted that in 2020 Amazon signed a master agreement which allows it to treat all UK central government agencies as one client, which will further increase the volume of its UK contracts.
Despite Amazon collecting public money through large and rapidly growing government IT contracts, the tax payments of this company remain opaque. Indeed, a 2021 research report into Amazon’s tax practice shows that only a fraction of the company’s UK sales are accounted for in its UK accounts. Sales in the UK and elsewhere appear to be channelled through subsidiaries in Luxembourg and, although Amazon says that UK revenues recognised in Luxembourg are reported to HMRC, there is no public accountability as Luxembourg accounts do not disclose how much tax, if any, the company is paying in the UK. Amazon’s practices are replicated by many multinational companies, and the aim of my amendment is to press the Government to use the Bill to start to take some action. The Bill offers a chance to ensure an increase in transparency around the tax affairs of potential suppliers of government contracts. It also offers the opportunity to ensure the exclusion of companies that have engaged or are engaging in egregious tax abuse.
Tax non-compliance has been a potential ground for exclusion from government contracts for some time. In 2013, the Cabinet Office issued Action Note 06/13, which sought to ensure that companies bidding for government contracts declared any tax non-compliance in the procurement process, but this has had no effect whatever. Following FOIs to more than 40 government departments by the think tank TaxWatch, not a single incidence of the supplier being excluded was reported. It was also clear that very little compliance monitoring was occurring. The majority of departments responded saying that there were no incidents reported, but not every department even provided that response; some said they were unable to answer as it would take too long to respond. Will the Minister tell me why departments are so weak in holding these companies to account?
The Bill currently includes misconduct in relation to tax as a mandatory exclusion ground in Schedule 6, Part 2, but mandatory exclusion grounds do not mean that the supplier must be excluded from a procurement competition. A supplier becomes an excluded supplier only if it qualifies for a mandatory exclusion ground and
“the circumstances giving rise to the application of the exclusion ground are likely to occur again”.
The legislation also covers participation in defeated avoidance schemes. The mandatory exclusion ground covering defeated tax avoidance schemes includes instances where a tax return has been amended due to the participation of the taxpayer in a tax avoidance scheme and where the taxpayer has reached a settlement with HMRC, in which case there is no need for the person to receive an adverse judgment in a tax tribunal. When it comes to individuals and companies that have engaged in tax avoidance, the provisions of the Bill are wide-ranging but mandatory exclusion grounds apply only where
there has been an assessment by HMRC. That assessment is final, meaning that any appeal rights have been exhausted.
We know that tax litigation is often complex and sometimes takes an exceptionally long time to wind its way through the justice system. When it comes to large companies, including the multinationals, it is common practice for the tax authority to settle tax disputes without penalties being charged.
We know that major companies—Amazon, Google and General Electric—have been investigated in recent years by authorities around the world for committing serious tax offences, but in each instance they have settled rather than admitting guilt and receiving full penalties. As such, none of these companies is barred from procuring government contracts and, with that, taxpayer money. The exact terms of these settlements are not always available to the public. Often settlements between major corporations and tax authorities involve an adjustment to tax liability without an admission by the company engaged in any wrongdoing; the dispute is simply characterised as a difference of opinion over a tax treatment. One way to strengthen the Bill would be to require a company to disclose whether it was currently under investigation for tax offences in the UK or abroad, or where the company had reached a settlement with a tax authority following an investigation for a tax offence.
The Global Reporting Initiative tax standard is a finance reporting standard that provides enhanced public transparency for companies and their tax payments. In particular, it provides for companies to report their economic activities in each country where they operate and the taxes paid in each country—country-by-country reporting. This is a transparency mechanism for revealing corporate tax avoidance. This often involves a company moving profits from higher-tax countries into tax havens. If a company is engaged in profit shifting, that will appear in country-by-country reporting by a company showing very high profits in low-tax countries where the company has little economic activity, and low profits in higher-tax countries where much more activity takes place. For example, Amazon does not provide a breakdown in its accounts of revenues, profits and tax payments in non-US markets by jurisdiction, making it difficult for investors, the public and tax authorities around the world to evaluate whether Amazon is engaged in responsible tax practices.
The implementation of the GRI would allow for some necessary scrutiny. A group of Amazon investors put forward a shareholder resolution at the Amazon AGM in May 2022 calling for greater transparency in the company’s tax affairs and to make disclosures in line with the GRI. That resolution was defeated but was backed by 21% of independent shareholders. Country-by-country reporting is mandatory for multinationals engaged in the extractive and logging industries under rules implemented by several legislatures around the world. Country-by-country reporting is mandatory in the banking sector under EU legislation. Numerous multinational organisations now voluntarily report using the GRI tax standard. My amendment would require all large companies bidding for government contracts to produce a copy of reporting under the
GRI tax standard. In addition, the supplier should report details of any tax investigations and report where it is based in a tax haven or is a subsidiary of a person based in a tax haven.
My second amendment would provide for a Minister to lay regulations listing those jurisdictions that are considered to be providing a tax haven to suppliers. Clearly my amendments are not the whole answer to the issue of tax shifting by multinational companies, but using the Bill would be one of the stepping stones that we could take to a much fairer tax situation in this country. I hope the Government will be sympathetic. I beg to move.