UK Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday that companies needed to pay their fair share of tax if they wanted to do business in Britain, according to Reuters.
"I am a low-tax Conservative but I'm not a companies-should-pay-no-tax Conservative," Cameron told CEOs and investors in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "Individuals and businesses must pay their fair share."
Cameron said the Group of Eight industrialised countries should focus on countering corporate tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. "This is a problem for all countries not just for Britain," he said.
Cameron did not mention any companies by name in the speech but British politicians have accused Starbucks and Google of manipulating transfer prices to shift profits into low tax jurisdictions. Starbucks and Google say they comply with UK tax law.
"Any businesses who think that they can carry on dodging that fair share or that they can keep on selling to the UK and setting up ever-more complex tax arrangements abroad to squeeze their tax bill right down – well, they need to wake up and smell the coffee because the public who buy from them have had enough," Cameron said.
