Consumer anger continues to build up over the way that large companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Mondelez (owners of Cadbury) can easily, and currently legally manipulate their accounts for their UK operations to pay little or no tax on billions of pounds of profits made here. Paying no corporation tax at all are huge and hugely profitable investment banks such as JP Morgan, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Deutsch Bank AG, Nomura Holdings and Morgan Stanley.

In the case of the banks there is a feeling that the sector has already been parasitic enough on the British taxpayer, courtesy of the British government, without grabbing more off them with aggressive tax-avoidance schemes.

Note: Google have recently agreed to pay £130 million in back taxes, an amount some MPs have described as derisory.

Tax evasion however has earned jail sentences for three investment bankers, an accountant formerly with Ernst and Young as well as a former chairman of the South Wales branch of the Institute of Taxation and an independent financial adviser. All were involved in a £2.2 million tax fraud linked to the film industry. (The Business Desk)

Bogus film companies that rich professionals could invest in were set up, which then posted fraudulently documented “losses” that the investors could use to offset against their tax liability, gaining £40,000 from the taxpayer for every £20,000 invested.