Investigation Of Tax Avoidance

EDM number 84 in 2005-06, proposed by Austin Mitchell on 17/05/2005.

That this House urges the Government to investigate the activities of Alliance and Leicester, Allied Domecq, Amazon.com, Amersham, Arcadia, Barclays, BAE, BAT, BHS, BOC Group, Compass Group, Dixons, GlaxoSmithKline, Honda, IDEA, Kelda Group, Lloyds TSB, Merrill Lynch, NewsCorp, Nissan, Northern and Shell, Portland Enterprises, Prudential, Rolls Royce, Sage Group, Shell, Severn Trent, Shell, Tesco, Toyota, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Trains, Vodafone and WPP, all of whom consistently pay considerably less than the 30 per cent. rate of corporation tax, thus depriving the UK Treasury of billions of pounds of tax revenues each year; and suggests that each company be required to publish a full explanation of why it pays tax at less than the standard rate of corporation tax, as well as listing the tax avoidance schemes used to this end and the sources from which they acquired the schemes.

This motion has been signed by a total of 33 MPs.