Big Four to appear before Public Accounts Committee

BIG FOUR tax partners are to appear before the Public Accounts Committee as it continues its investigations into tax avoidance.

Witnesses from PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young will appear on 31 January and will include KPMG's UK head of tax Jane McCormack, Deloitte's head of tax policy Bill Dodwell, PwC's head of tax Kevin Nicholson and E&Y's head of tax policy John Dixon.

Last year, the committee condemned multinational companies – including Amazon, Google and Starbucks – for using transfer pricing arrangements to dramatically reduce their UK tax bills, while also criticising HM Revenue & Customs for "not taking sufficiently aggressive action to assess and collect the appropriate amount of corporation tax from these multinationals".

Committee chairwoman and Labour MP Margaret Hodge has been particularly scathing, accusing HMRC of "lacking clarity" in its approach to enforcing the corporation tax regime and branding the multinationals as "immoral" for using tax avoidance arrangements.