An influential group of MPs is to investigate corporate tax avoidance as the clamour grows for action on companies seen as paying less than their fair share.
The inquiry, by the Treasury select committee, will raise the political temperature around the issue – already under scrutiny after questions over the tax bills of multinationals such as Vodafone and Barclays – and senior executives face the prospect of explaining their companies' tax structures to the committee.
George Mudie, the Labour MP for Leeds East and the chairman of the Commons Treasury sub-committee, told the Guardian that there was growing public interest. "When people see their standards of living fall and are paying their tax, and see huge salaries and questions over tax avoidance, then quite rightly they are interested in the issue," he said.
Mudie said the committee had not decided whether or not the full committee would consider the issue, or just the sub-committee: "I will be seeking to take the sub-committee into it unless the chairman [Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie] says we will do it in the full committee."
It would be May before the committee could consider the issue in detail, Mudie said, given pressures over the budget and the Easter break.
Tax avoidance has been thrust into the spotlight recently by campaigners such as those from UK Uncut, alleging that multinationals such as Vodafone and individuals such as Arcadia's chief, Sir Philip Green, have avoided huge sums in tax through complicated structures often based offshore.
Critics allege that HM Revenue & Customs let Vodafone off a £6bn tax bill on profits funnelled through a Luxembourg subsidiary, a claim denied by the tax agency. Green's shops have been the subject of sit-ins by UK Uncut, unhappy about a £1.2bn dividend Green paid out of retail group Arcadia in 2005 to a family trust, which campaigners say was in reality his income and should have been taxed as such. Barclays has faced criticism and direct action too, not least after disclosing that it paid £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 after making profits globally of almost £12bn.
Tax advisers say they detect no particular weakening of the rules on tax avoidance under the coalition. The government is considering plans to introduce a general anti-avoidance rule, and last week's budget contained a range of new measures to target the issue.
Bill Dodwell of Deloitte said: "There's a considerable amount out there on tax avoidance already. I'm not sure what the committee would add."
But the National Audit Office and another powerful group of MPs, the public accounts committee, are already looking at the procedures which led to the government's £1.25bn deal with Vodafone.
The investigation comes as pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca said the UK and US had agreed on a settlement over the issue of where its profits should be declared, an agreement which will cost the group $1.1bn (£689m).
Under the deal, AstraZeneca will pay substantially less than it had budgeted for. This means the company can unlock some of its outstanding tax provisions, increasing its earnings this year by $500m and raising its profit targets by almost 7%. Its effective tax rate will also be slashed from 27% to 21%.
The deal means AstraZeneca will receive tax refunds in several other countries, as profits are booked in the US instead. A spokeswoman for the company confirmed that HMRC will hand back an undisclosed tax payment to be passed on to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She would not say how much this would be, but insisted it was less than the headline figure of $1.1bn.
"Our UK total tax contribution will be still be substantial in 2011, and we continue to be one of the biggest payers of UK business taxes in the FTSE 100," she said.
Pharmaceuticals companies have been repeatedly caught up in transfer pricing disputes. Drugs companies would rather profits from major drugs could be booked in lower-tax jurisdictions, where the drugs are often manufactured, while higher-tax countries where the drugs were developed and marketed argue for a share of the taxable profits.
In 2006 GlaxoSmithKline settled a transfer pricing dispute with the IRS, costing it $3.4bn, while AstraZeneca itself settled a dispute on the same issue with the UK last year for £505m.
