Finance Bill

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Flint]

That is correct.

I was hopeful for my June amendment, because since the 2015 general election, the Government had, on a number of occasions indicated their support for public country-by-country reporting, and I welcome that. I am grateful to the former Financial Secretary, now Chief Secretary to the Treasury, as his approach was always constructive as we sought the best way to proceed.

At the debate in June, four days after the EU referendum, the Minister and others were concerned that introducing my amendment at that time might put UK multinationals at a competitive disadvantage for reputational reasons. I have no doubt that a number of the businesses to which my amendment would apply have already suffered reputational damage and more transparency could actually enhance their standing. To the Government’s credit, the UK was the first to introduce public registers of beneficial ownership, and others followed. Backing public country-by country reporting is an opportunity to show leadership again. Indeed, it is a pro-business measure. This kind of reporting already exists within the extractive sector and in financial services. Some companies are ahead of the curve and have started to publish this information. I am talking about companies such as SSE, the energy supplier, and the cosmetics retailer Lush, which operates in 49 different countries. The Government also said that, although they supported the principle, they would prefer to move ahead with others rather than alone.

As the Government make plans to leave the European Union, which may not be all smooth sailing, I do appreciate Ministers’ caution. I am grateful to the new Financial Secretary, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), for the constructive dialogue that we have had over the past two months. I am grateful, too, to my colleagues from the Public Accounts Committee—my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), and the hon. Members for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), and for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills)— for their advice and support during the recess, and I thank all those who have signed amendment 145.

I hope that the Government will regard this amendment as a friendly proposal. If it is passed today, the Commons will enshrine in law support for the principle of public country-by-country reporting with the power for the Government to introduce when the time is most appropriate. That sends a very powerful message, confirming the UK’s leading role in addressing tax evasion and avoidance and providing the Government with the tools to move quickly, when the time is right, without the need for primary legislation.

Last week, the European Commission served a €13 billion tax bill on tech giant Apple. Although the rate of corporation tax in Ireland is low at 12.5%, the Commission concluded that Apple had, in effect, paid 1% corporation tax from 2003 and a tiny 0.005% in corporation tax since 2014. I am afraid that that implies that even low corporation tax rates are no guarantee that a country will collect its rightful share. In this case, €13 billion is equivalent to paying £50 of tax on every £1 million of profits. Apple is entitled to defend its position, but the case highlights the need for more transparency in multinational business affairs.

Finally, having listened to the Government’s concerns and shared with them my arguments for today’s amendment, I hope that the House can come together and make UK public country-by-country reporting a matter not of if, but when.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I do not intend to detain the House for an unduly lengthy period of time, because I know that everyone wants to get to bed before midnight. I want to set out why country-by-country reporting is so very important, and why the whole culture of tax avoidance by big business and multinationals is something that we cannot condone or tolerate.

People ask what is wrong with an organisation such as Apple organising its tax affairs to its best possible advantage. After all, is that not the principle of taxation—that there is no equity in taxation and that only the literal taxation rules should apply? However, my concern is that the conduct of Apple is unacceptable for three key reasons. If a big business organises its tax affairs so that it basically pays no tax whatsoever, then it is inevitably warping the free market, because it is getting an unfair tax advantage, or a tax advantage that gives it a competitive advantage over other enterprises that are paying tax on their profit. For me, that is a really serious issue.

The other issue with Apple in Ireland is that to have a special deal for one business that does not apply to everyone else is counter to the fundamental principle of the rule of law, which is that everyone should be treated the same—be they a cleaner at Apple or Apple itself. What is offensive is if a cleaner in the office is paying more in tax than the massive, profitable enterprise whose offices they are cleaning.

Let me continue with the case of Apple. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) made a powerful point. If it has created all this intellectual property, he asked what was wrong with its not being caught in the UK tax net. My answer is that that intellectual property was in fact created in Silicon Valley, but is the organisation paying tax in Silicon Valley? Is it paying tax in America? No, it is not. It has set up a clever structure. Early in its evolution as a business—some 10 or 20 years ago—it sold its outside American intellectual property rights for $1, or some other small sum, to a Bermuda company, which would then have a conduit through Ireland to invest across the rest of Europe.

The company then checks the box for US tax purposes in respect of everything below Bermuda so that, from the Internal Revenue Service’s point of view, it looks as though the Bermuda company is the trading company, and because it is a trading company and the only enterprise that there is for US tax purposes, it is not caught by subpart F of the controlled foreign companies regulations, meaning that no tax can be deemed to have to be repatriated to the United States. As a result, the Bermuda enterprise becomes a cash box for reinvestment across the European theatre. Therein lies the unfair competitive advantage.

[John Redwood]

I remind my hon. Friend that I did not mention the word “Apple” and I expressed no view on Apple’s tax affairs, one way or the other. I asked a question about how we as legislators globally can produce a system that is fair and sensible so that people know what companies should be paying. I have not studied Apple’s tax affairs in details so I would not presume to lecture either for or against what that company does.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I stand corrected by my right hon. Friend. It is not a question of Apple; it is a question of general US outbound tax planning. That is why country-by-country reporting matters.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I agree with the points that the hon. Gentleman makes, but can he confirm my understanding that if the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) had applied in Ireland in the case of Apple, we would have known that very, very large profits were being made by the company, which seems to have existed only on paper, and we would also have known that it was paying a tiny amount of tax? Would not that have been a valuable step forward in understanding what was going on?

[Charlie Elphicke]

The key issue is that we did know. As I recall, Apple had to report the situation in some investigation by the Senate in the United States. The Senate was wondering why very little tax had been paid by Apple in the United States. If my recollection is not correct, I am sure a fellow Member of this House will correct me. The issue is one of transparency. These things come to light because the US Senate holds an investigation, or some other enterprise or organisation, such as the Public Accounts Committee, carries out an investigation and starts asking questions.

In the previous Parliament, I myself went through the accounts of Google, Amazon and Starbucks and looked at what they were paying as a proportion of profits. That is why I think country-by-country reporting ought to be considered, and on an international basis. It is important that countries act together to make sure that the international tax system is suitably robust for the internet age.

The reason that that matters is that when large enterprises, big businesses and the elites do not pay tax, it affects small businesses. It is the small business rooted in our soil which employs our neighbours and pays its dues that suffers when the competitive advantage, the level playing field and the rule of law are warped in that way. That is my prime concern. Small businesses in my constituency in Dover and Deal are the lifeblood of my local economy and I want them to have a fair crack. I want the towns and regions of this great nation, England, that I represent, and Wales and Scotland to have a fair crack and to be able to come to the fore. Particularly in Brexit Britain, it is important that they are able to come to the fore, to be galvanised and to be part of the leadership of this nation. That is why we need a Britain that works for the 90%, which is the towns and regions of our nations, rather than for big business and the elite 10%. That is important and it is why we need a tax system that works for everyone.

I have been deeply concerned recently when looking at accounts in the car rental industry. Colleagues may recall that Avis was accused of imposing a Brexit tax on people renting its cars. I looked at its accounts and saw that Avis had paid no tax itself. It taxed its British customers but did not seem to pay any British corporation tax on its profits.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an incredibly powerful speech about the reasons for tax transparency, but in the case of companies such as Avis, which he mentions, should we not have transparency for one simple reason only—so that consumers can vote with their feet? If they believe that they are purchasing products from companies that are not paying tax in this country or in other countries, they can go and buy those products from other companies that are paying tax.

[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.