HM Revenue and Customs has "too cosy" a relationship with large accountancy firms which advise wealthy individuals and corporations on how to avoid tax, a parliamentary report has warned.
In a hard-hitting report, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said it did not believe HMRC and the Crown Prosecution Service were doing enough to bring tax cheats to court, with the tax authorities often preferring to come to arrangements with large companies to recover tax owed.
Committee chair Margaret Hodge said the PAC's investigations over the past five years had exposed how companies like Google, Starbucks and Amazon used "artificial structures and complex transactions" to move profits out of the reach of the UK taxman.
And she said hearings with the "Big Four" accountancy firms had laid bare the existence of a "tax avoidance industry" of accountants, advisers and lawyers, "all of whom are making lucrative business out of designing and selling ways for their clients to avoid tax".
She named PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as one of the firms which were "selling these schemes on an industrial scale".
Mrs Hodge added: "We remain concerned that HMRC's relationship with these large accountancy firms is too cosy, and it needs to get much tougher in challenging the advice they give to their clients."
Mrs Hodge - who has been a scourge of tax-dodging multinationals in her five years at the helm of the committee - said it was "disappointing" that HMRC had rejected the PAC's call for a tougher code of conduct for tax advisers.
She welcomed Chancellor George Osborne's Budget announcement of new criminal offences for assisting tax evasion.
Mrs Hodge said that tax avoidance was "a major issue of public debate and public concern" and that the committee's investigations had shone a light on "the unacceptable practices and sheer lengths that some companies go to in order to avoid paying the appropriate amount of tax on the profits they make from their activity here in the UK."
An HMRC spokesman said: "We are pleased that the committee recognises the progress that HMRC has made in clamping down on tax evasion and avoidance, by relentlessly pursuing those who seek to cheat the system. We have shut down marketed avoidance schemes, closed loopholes, secured tough new enforcement powers, and opened up international information exchanges so rich evaders will have no safe havens where they can hide their money.
"As a result of our compliance efforts and the £1 billion extra investment over this Parliament, we have secured more than £100 billion in additional revenues in the past five years to pay for essential public services, raised penalties for tax evasion to 200% of tax owed and increased prosecutions five-fold."
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