http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22615146

Those are some very specific denials... I'd bet half the committee has avoided tax too!

Ireland has also responded. As for the committee, they benefit from exemption on insider dealing so make a small fortune from such knowledge, so can legally earn money that would get the rest of us locked up.

It's mildly diverting considering the 'headline piece' is actually the opposite of the problem in the UK. We've got companies who earn massive amounts of cash in the UK shuffling it abroad so they don't have to pay tax on it, Apple have a mass of money abroad that they don't want to bring into the US because they'll pay tax on it, to the point where it costs them less to pay interest on loans than spend their own money.

We're essentially arguing the opposite to the Americans - we're saying you tax profits in the country they are earned, the yanks are saying tax profits where the company is headquartered. This doesn't bode well for future international co-operation on tax law improvements.

I agree, it will be a situation of where governments will try to competitively out do their trading partners. Eventually governments will have to act or they will find election impossible as they dismantle state services to balance the books.

Tesco, Vodafone, BP and all the other UK based companies that make large profits abroad don't repatriate that money to the UK to pay tax any more than their American counterparts do.

Internal moneys are different, in that the USA has internal tax havens like Delaware and Miami, so they have less incentive to push money out of the country, they just do it between states.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22612041

Interesting article from the BBC economics correspondent on this