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11 Oct 2011
NINETY-EIGHT of the FTSE 100 companies have subsidiaries in tax havens, a report by the ActionAid charity has said.
The report, Addicted to tax havens, showed that FTSE 100 companies have a total of 34,216 subsidiaries and 38% of their overseas companies are located in low tax jurisdictions. Only Fresnillo and Hargreaves Lansdown do not have subsidiaries in tax havens, the research shows.
Further reading
The banking sector was a particularly big user of tax havens, with the Big Four banks - HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds and RBS - owning a total of 1,649 tax haven companies. The report states that Barclays alone has 174 companies in the Cayman Islands.
Advertising giant WPP, which moved its headquarters to Dublin because of the UK's tax regime, is the biggest user of tax havens, with 611 companies based in low-tax jurisdictions.
Strikingly, there are more FTSE 100 subsidiaries in Jersey than in China, the findings show.
"The findings are of particular concern because many FTSE 100 groups are set to benefit from plans currently under consideration by the Treasury to give multinational companies using tax havens an £840m tax break, by relaxing the very rules designed to prevent tax-haven abuse," the report says.
The report concludes that the G20 should move to ensure that tax havens are forced to share information with tax authorities not only in rich countries but in developing countries that want to receive it by supporting multilateral tax information exchange initiatives.
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Visitor comments Add your comment
Shock!!
How much in charitable funds did ActionAid waste in researching and producing this report? Is there anybody out there that didn't know this?
Will their next report tell us that Wednesday almost always falls after Tuesday but look out for the International Date Line?
Posted by: Richard, 11 Oct 2011 | 11:06
The real shock?
Most individuals don't choose to ignore the Tuesday/Wednesday rule, Richard.
We all know about ActionAids findings and we all needed a good reminder.
Posted by: Scott, 11 Oct 2011 | 14:45
Oh please...
Why should they have their money robbed anyway? The only time it becomes egregious is when they are corporate welfare queens, but one still wonders why the blame should fall on firms for exploiting the horn of plenty social democracies lay out for them, rather than the very prone to abuse system run by power-hungry politicos? We need a strong reminder to the government that it has no right to our productive endeavours and is at best a parasite. Eliabeth Warren's lunacy notwithstanding. I can also play in a la-la-land with magical "social" documents posing as contracts that give one free right to blindly robbing the entire populace.
"The report concludes that the G20 should move to ensure that tax havens are forced to share information with tax authorities not only in rich countries but in developing countries that want to receive it by supporting multilateral tax information exchange initiatives."
Bollocks. Why is everything else meant to be subject to competition but not governments?
Posted by: Anthony, 11 Oct 2011 | 17:48