Councils take action on tax dodging

A campaign led by leading charity, Christian Aid, is asking local authorities to use their spending power as leverage to force large corporations to pay more of the tax they owe.

Christian Aid’s campaign coordinator, David Thomas, said: “It is only right that large companies bidding for lucrative tax-payer funded council contracts should be expected to be socially responsible tax-payers themselves.”

Councils are asked to include a range of tax compliance questions, devised by the central Westminster government, in their procurement procedures when companies are bidding for contracts over a certain threshold value.

The questions aim to reveal whether companies have been involved in abusive tax practices anywhere in the world and councils can then take this information into consideration when choosing who to award contracts to.

Christian Aid has estimated that developing countries lose as much as $160 billion each year as a result of tax dodging by some unscrupulous companies.

They hope that the introduction of these tax compliance questions, will send a powerful message to companies that tax dodging is unacceptable and may damage their reputation and ultimately their ability to win public contracts.