Richard Brooks is an ex-HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) tax
inspector turned investigative journalist, regarded as one of
the UK’s best reporters on tax avoidance. Brooks
is a regular contributor to Private Eye and writes for
other publications including The Guardian.
His book The Great Tax Robbery, examining the
UK’s corporate tax regime, was released
earlier this year. Brooks has also conducted investigations
into tax avoidance by SAB Miller in Ghana and Associated
British Foods in Zambia, and has written a series of articles
on Vodafone’s tax structure.
Brooks says while the OECD’s base erosion and
profit shifting (BEPS) project could produce a blueprint for
fair taxation of multinationals, he does not think it will
enact the change needed to solve the tax avoidance problem.
"Translating principles into effective tax law in the UK and
elsewhere will require Herculean efforts in re-writing tax
treaties and domestic laws that the UK and other governments -
and their likely successors - will not make as long as they
remain beholden to multinationals and their fixers in the tax
profession," says Brooks. "The Coalition's recent trashing of
the UK's best defence against profit-shifting to low tax
regimes, the controlled foreign companies laws, proved our
government's willingness to spout anti-avoidance rhetoric on
the world stage whilst enshrining profit-shifting in UK
statute."
And Brooks says recent events have shown that exposure is
the most potent weapon to fight tax avoidance, and therefore
the most effective measure the UK government could take would
be to open up details of companies' tax payments in the
country.
He is also concerned that information exchange will come up
short in preventing offshore evasion because tax havens do not
keep the required information, and says future governments will
be left to confront the problem.
"It is for the rest of the world to kick territories with
financial secrecy and predatory tax systems out of the economic
club," says Brooks. "In the meantime it is essential that the
UK government reverses its disgraceful policy of effectively
de-criminalising major tax fraud and its facilitation by
private bankers."