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• How big UK groups paid no corporation tax in 2007 

Some of Britain’s biggest listed companies, including several that have threatened to redomicile abroad, paid little or no corporation tax in Britain in 2007.

Research by The Times shows that FTSE-100 companies – Cadbury, Standard Chartered and British American Tobacco, which have a combined market capitalisation of £75 billion, employed almost 11,000 UK staff and generated more than £6 billion in global profits, – paid zero corporation tax in Britain last year.

Although there is no suggestion of impropriety, the research indicates that some of Britain’s biggest and best-known companies contribute startlingly little to the Exchequer in corporation tax. Most of the companies earn the bulk of their profits overseas, meaning that they also pay most or all of their taxes outside the UK, allowing them to offset these against domestic tax liabilities. In some cases, this allows them to pay no British corporation tax at all. . . .

A spokeswoman for BAT, the twelfth-biggest company in the UK by market value and the owner of the cigarette brands Lucky Strike and Pall Mall, said that its head office operated at a loss and that 99 per cent of its profits were earned overseas. She said that the company welcomed the Treasury’s decision to examine the UK’s tax laws.

A spokesman for SABMiller, the brewing group, which paid less than £100,000 in corporation tax in Britain last year, said: “We have a very small commercial operation in the UK that employs about 70 people and is only a developing business. All other profits are taxed at source.”

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