Starbucks has not been singled out for criticism over tax, a senior Tory insisted yesterday after the firm reportedly threatened to abandon UK investment plans.
Kris Engskov, the firm's UK managing director, demanded urgent talks at Downing Street after Prime Minister David Cameron took a thinly veiled swipe at the coffee giant.
In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in which he promised to lead global action against tax avoidance, Mr Cameron said it was time for businesses to "wake up and smell the coffee" about public anger.
Starbucks has been one of the highest-profile targets of protests about "aggressive" tax avoidance after it emerged it paid no corporation tax in the last three years and only £8.6 million in 14 years of trading in Britain
While the firm has changed its tax arrangements so that it will pay around £10m in corporation tax this year, the revelations sparked a boycott and political accusations of immoral behaviour.
Mr Engskov was reported to have used the meeting to threaten to put on hold a planned £100m investment in new UK branches of the coffee chain.
Tory Party chairman Grant Shapps said: "I don't think we would ever single out a single company.
"People who work very hard, build up their companies from scratch... are paying their fair share of taxes all the way through. The same rules have to apply to everyone."
A Starbucks spokesman said: "Starbucks agrees with the Prime Minister that all businesses should pay their fair share. We employ 9000 people, contribute £300m worth of annual economic benefit and are forgoing tax deductions that will make the UK Exchequer at least £20m better off."
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