The UK government intends to end tax avoidance schemes used by technology companies, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said Sept. 29, reportedly referring to plans to target companies that use double Irish tax avoidance arrangements.
Speaking at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Birmingham, Osborne said that the UK intends to clamp down on tech companies that go to “extraordinary lengths to pay little or no tax here.”
“If you abuse our tax system, you abuse the trust of the British people. And my message to those companies is clear: we will put a stop to it,” Osborne said.
According to a source quoted by Andrew Sparrow of The Guardian, by these comments, Osborne was alluding to government’s plans to target MNEs that use double Irish tax avoidance strategies. The source said that Osborne intends to announce in his Dec. 3 Autumn Statement to Parliament that companies using the strategy must pay tax on profits as if they were incurred in the UK and that hundreds of millions of pounds would be raised from this “Google tax.” Osborne made no explicit mention of this in his speech, however.
Osborne also said that he will announce the implementation of global international tax changes in the Autumn Statement. The UK has already announced that it intends to implement the country-by-country template outlined of the OECD’s base erosion profit shifting work.
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