Companies miss the mark on transparency

Only 17 of the FTSE 50 companies had published online a tax strategy by 30 June 2017 in line with the government’s tax transparency regulations according to research by the Fair Tax Mark and the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum. Further disclosure of the level of tax risk that the business was prepared to accept was absent in many cases as was clarity on tax planning motives. Nearly all of them failed to comment on how they worked with HMRC on interpreting the law.

The Fair Tax Mark report also assessed the degree to which companies provided clarity on other best practice indicators:

• their approach to and use of tax havens;
• the provision of public country-by-country reporting of economic activity; and
• the degree to which the tax strategy covers global operations.

The report says that some...