Financial Transparency Coalition

Bob Diamond was before the Treasury Select Committee Tuesday. Chuka Umunna, MP fr Streatham, was one of those questioning him. And as the Daily Mail notes, he tabled some new evidence on the use of tax havens / secrecy jurisdictions by Barclays: I admit I spoke to Chuka’s office about this before the event, suggesting how they might find this data from the annual return forms of the bank.

This October 2010 report from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) highlights how UK banks will avoid paying £19 billion of tax on future profits by offsetting their losses during the financial crisis against their tax bills, and it advocates for an international country-by-country reporting standard for multinational corporations.

My report for the TUC on corporate taxation in the UK, published today, highlights an issue not picked up by the press, but for me of some considerable significance. That is the decline of corporate reporting for activities in the UK – less than 20% of the largest companies in the UK now reporting in this way compared to 50% a decade ago. As I note in that report:

In 2000, half the sample of companies surveyed published information in their published accounts on their results arising in the UK. Usually this separate...