Super rich corporations and individuals dodge a massive £25bn in taxes, a hard-hitting study commissioned by the Trade Union Congress claimed today.
The research, compiled by high-profile tax campaigner Richard Murphy, found that through various tax breaks and planning individuals were avoiding £13bn in tax while large corporates were paying £12bn less than they should.
Analysis of the top 50 companies' accounts shows that their effective corporation tax rate is 22.5 per cent - not the 30 per cent agreed by Parliament.
Individuals skirted tax by turning earned income into investment income and shifting the income to others in lower or nil tax bands. Other strategies for avoiding tax included moving moving transactions out of the UK and turning income into a capital gain.
'There is mounting concern at the growing gap between the super-rich and the rest of society, but so far there have been few practical proposals to do anything about it,' said TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.
The TUC used the report as a launch pad to lobby for a minimum rate of tax to be paid by all those earning more than £100,000 a year to limit their use of tax avoidance and tax planning; a stop to HMRC staff cuts so that there are sufficient resources to effectively collect tax, the abolition of non-dom loopholes and for capital gains on assets held for less than a year to be charged to income tax.
The TUC also wants to see a change to the tax treatment of charities to give them more income and close a tax loophole and the introduction of a new 'general anti-avoidance principle' to make it easier to tax the super-rich and large companies.
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