Symonds warns against 'naming and shaming'
Jonathan Symonds, chairman of the influential FTSE100 group of finance directors, says naming and shaming companies as part of the government's crackdown on tax avoidance would be 'counterproductive'.
Profile: Jonathan Symonds, FD of AstraZeneca
Symonds, who is finance director of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, told the FT, businesses wanted to work with the government to ‘devise guidelines on legitimate and illegitimate tax avoidance’.
‘We have only just begun a dialogue. Naming and shaming is not going to be very constructive,’ Symonds said.
Symonds comments come off the back of a leaked document which detailed discussions between Customs & Excise and mobile phone giant Vodafone over a VAT avoidance scheme, which MMO2, BT’s mobile phone arm admitted it was also using.