Public opinion

Public opinion

Tax avoidance may be considered to be the dodging of one's duties to society, or alternatively the right of every citizen to structure one's affairs in a manner allowed by law, to pay no more tax than what is required. Attitudes vary from approval through neutrality to outright hostility. Attitudes may vary depending on the steps taken in the avoidance scheme, or the perceived unfairness of the tax being avoided.^[58]
In 2008, the charity Christian Aid published a report, Death and taxes: the true toll of tax dodging, which criticised tax exiles and tax avoidance by some of the world's largest companies, linking tax evasion to the deaths of millions of children in developing countries.^[59] However the research behind these calculations has been questioned in a 2009 paper prepared for the UK Department for International Development.^[60] According to the Financial Times there is a growing trend for charities to prioritise tax avoidance as a key campaigning issue, with policy makers across the world considering changes to make tax avoidance more difficult.^[61]
In 2010, tax avoidance became a hot-button issue in the UK. An organisation, UK Uncut, began to encourage people to protest at local high-street shops that were thought to be avoiding tax, such as Vodafone, Topshop and the Arcadia Group.^[62]
In 2012, during the Occupy movement in the United States, tax avoidance for the 99% was proposed as a protest tool.^[63]
Prem Sikka, Professor of Accounting at the Essex Business School (University of Essex) and scientific advisor of the Tax Justice Network pointed to a discrepancy between the Corporate Social Responsibility claims of multinational companies and “their internal dynamics aimed at maximising their profits through things like tax avoidance”. He wrote in an article commenting the Lux Leaks publications: “Big corporations and accountancy firms are engaged in organised hypocrisy.”^[64]

Fair Tax Mark

As a response to public opinion regarding tax avoidance, the Fair Tax Mark was established in the UK during 2014 as an independent certification scheme to identify companies which pay taxes "in accordance with the spirit of all tax laws" and not to use options, allowances, or reliefs, or undertake specific transactions, "that are contrary to the spirit of the law".^[65][66] The Mark is operated by a not-for-profit community benefit society.
Awardees of this mark include The Co-op,^[67] SSE, Go Ahead Group, Lush Cosmetics, Marshalls, several large regional co-operatives (East of England, Midcounties, Scotmid) and The Phone Co-op.