Yet another reason for public corporate ownership registers in the UK's overseas territories. We're now asking council officials to chase tax debts from BVI companies: having to use international legal assistance processes just adds to their problems
www.taxwatchuk.org/the-transpar...
Councils could secure a tax debt on the property. But a charging order takes time and expense, and doesn't help if the property isn't sold or remortgaged.
Taxing in the dark:
@transparencyuk.bsky.social highlights the challenge of overstretched local authorities enforcing the new 'Mansion Tax' when 23% of offshore companies owning UK properties have failed to declare their beneficial owner
www.transparency.org.uk/news/uks-new...
➡️ Criminal prosecutions: still at less than half the pre-pandemic level. Partly a problem with court backlogs (charging decisions are rising). Nonetheless more people were prosecuted for fishing offences than for tax fraud in 2024-25.
➡️ Enablers of defeated tax avoidance schemes: fewer than five (and possibly zero) penalties each year to 2024. Then a spate of 180 penalties in 2024-25 but each averaging £9055: a cost of doing business rather than a dissuasive penalty.
➡️ Enabling offshore tax evasion (introduced in 2016): zero penalties
➡️ Dishonest conduct by a tax adviser: fewer than five possibly zero) penalties since 2021. Even for previous penalties: HMRC is able to publish the name of the penalised tax agent, but has never done so
Figures which TaxWatch obtained for our 2025 State of Tax Administration report lays out the full problem:
taxwatchuk.org/wp-content/u...
"Aggressive tax avoidance & tax evasion have become decriminalised, not through any change in the law but through something far more corrosive: lack of enforcement"
Finance Bill 25-26 has new powers against tax schemers. But existing ones aren't being used, says
@philbrickellmp.bsky.social
So you’d think their businesses would be last in line for UK tax breaks. You’d be wrong.
@taxwatch.bsky.social exposed in the recent Spring Statement the UK gov quietly admitted that their global tax deal will let US multinationals off £700m a year until 2029.
👇 4/7
bsky.app/profile/taxw...
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/end
Link below to TaxWatch's full October 2025 report on the Pillar 2 'carve out' for US multinationals, where we estimate that globally countries may forgo up to $40 billion in tax revenues annually, including up to $6 billion from just six US tech giants:
www.taxwatchuk.org/a-blank-cheq...
Why are measures to crack down on US corporate giants shifting profits to tax havens - which the Chancellor said didn't go far enough when she was in opposition - now being watered down, just for US multinationals, and at the cost of over £2 bn during this Parliament alone?
➡️ Meanwhile: nine-tenths of the historic increase in the UK tax take during this Parliament is due to come from wages. Taxpayers shouldering this increase might well ask a simple question: /10
At the time, the UK Treasury said releasing the figures would endanger "a safe space" for officials "to formulate and develop policy" and might “prejudice relations between the UK and our international partners."
That doesn't seem to have stopped today's release - after the deal's been done. /9
➡️ Last year @TaxWatch asked the Treasury to release their estimate of what the deal would cost in lost UK and global tax revenues. They refused. . That means that MPs and the public have been kept in the dark until the deal was done and dusted in January. /8
➡️ These 15% ‘top-up’ taxes for the largest multinationals were agreed in an unprecedented 2021 agreement between over 130 countries, including the US and the UK. They're intended to provide a tax 'floor' to discourage profit-shifting into tax havens. /7
In January 2026, propelled by the UK and the rest of the G7, the other 130+ Pillar 2 countries agreed at the OECD. /6
www.oecd.org/en/about/new...
(While in opposition, the Chancellor said Pillar 2 taxes didn't go *far enough*: raising them from 15 to 21 % “would have brought £131m extra a week to Britain for our NHS and other public services, while also stopping our high streets being aggressively undercut.”) /5
How did this happen, and why aren't we talking about it?
➡️ In July 2025, the Chancellor & other G7 fin mins unilaterally announced that in response to US tax and tariff threats, US-headquartered multinationals would be exempted from 2 of 3 international ‘Pillar 2’ taxes. /4
🩺 In total that's the cost of training around 90,000 nurses during this Parliament. /3
Changes since November to countries signing up to the 'Pillar 2' deal - some of which may be a reaction to the US exemption from these minimum taxes - are expected to cost another £1.5 bn to 28/29, or £500, annually. That's £1.2bn a year by the end of this Parliament. /2
One major story slipped out with today's OBR Forecast, and without any public comment:
🌎A global tax carve-out for US multinationals, pushed by the UK and G7 to appease the US, is expected to let corporate giants off over £2bn of tax by 2028/29. That's £700m a year
🧵/1
Today’s figures on the missing taxes from big corporates that HMRC has recovered or prevented are good news. But they’re also a warning: we still need to keep an eye both on corporate giants’ tax returns, and on the way that tax law itself treats their tax behaviour. /end
And we need to keep resourcing this compliance work. Last year’s Spending Review gave HMRC an annual real budget cut of 1.5% to 2030 – including the deepest capital cuts of any department (24% a year). That’s seriously false economy.
bsky.app/profile/taxw...
Getting this right matters. Ensuring large businesses pay their due taxes is a very effective use of public money: every £ spent on big business compliance in 2024-25 generated £58 of extra revenue. (To compare, the ROI in non-wealthy individuals’ tax compliance was just £6.50.)
➡️And despite the £2 bn rise in diverted profit assessments of a smallish hardcore - almost the definition of what HMRC considers to be aggressive big business tax positions - HMRC has told TaxWatch that fewer than five cases with a diverted profits element are being litigated.
As a result, measures to take a harder line with uncooperative large businesses are almost never used.
➡️ The 2016 name/penalise regime for persistently aggressive tax planners has still never been used
➡️HMRC suspends 70% of large businesses' penalties to reward new compliance
That runs against the narrative that if big companies are underpaying tax these days, it’s due almost entirely to legitimate, gentlemanly disagreements over tax law. That’s the story that justifies HMRC’s ‘cooperative compliance’ approach. /10
That uptick includes a bumper £4.5 bn at stake in enquiries into what HMRC classifies as profits diverted through ‘contrived arrangements’. That’s up over £2 bn since 2022. /9
‘Tax under consideration’ /= tax avoided: many enquiries end up finding a smaller amount of extra tax is due, or none at all. But unless HMRC is chasing rainbows, the uptick suggests it thinks there's a tidy chunk of large companies' tax bills that isn’t yet being collected). /8
