MPs: regulate tax avoidance schemes

The government has been urged to regulate the activities of top accounting
firms in a House of Commons motion accusing firms of devising 'aggressive' tax avoidance schemes that cost the Treasury billions of pounds in revenues.

So far 22 MPs, mainly Labour, have signed the motion put down by Greater Grimsby
MP Austin Mitchell, a longstanding critic of the profession.

In addition, 25 MPs have signed a second motion, accusing banks, including those now largely in state ownership, of using tax havens to avoid tax.

The 'early day' motions have no chance of being debated but reflect growing concern among MPs about tax avoidance.

In the first motion, Mitchell alleges that KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, Ernst and Young, Grant Thornton and other accounting firms have been 'devising, marketing, promoting and implementing but then concealing aggressive tax
avoidance schemes'.

The MPs accuse the accounting firms of 'enabling wealthy and corporate clients to avoid taxes and national insurance contributions by transfer pricing, artificial loans, inflated management charges, special purpose vehicles, joint ventures, fictitious assets, offshore schemes and secretive trusts.'

The MPs claim that these schemes deprive the Treasury of billions of pounds of tax revenues, which in turn forces the government to curtail social investment and shift the tax burden on to ordinary taxpayers.

In his second motion, Mitchell alleges that banks financed by the UK taxpayer
through credit, loans, guarantees and other means, have been avoiding UK taxes.

The motion claims that Lloyds TSB, RBS, HSBC, and Barclays have between them 1,207 incorporated offshoots in tax havens to enable them and their clients to avoid and evade taxes

The motion urges the government not to give financial support to banks engaged in 'devising, marketing and implementing tax avoidance schemes that have no economic substance.'