I welcome the fact that HMRC is already carrying out an intensive investigation of offshore companies, including in Panama, and has asked the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to share the leaked data. They will act on it swiftly and appropriately. In addition to this I welcome the Prime Minister's announcement that a new taskforce will be established to deal with the so-called Panama Papers.
The Prime Minister has committed to provide resources to ensure that the files are fully investigated, once shared with HMRC, including initial new funding of up to £10 million to support the taskforce's work. I agree that there is more that can be done to tackle tax avoidance, evasion and other exploitations of the tax system. I am glad the Chancellor is working with other major countries to speed up progress towards sharing beneficial ownership information, so that enforcement agencies can share information on who really owns companies. This would allow for more effective investigation of financial wrongdoing.
The UK will publish its own register of company beneficial ownership from June 2016, making it clear who the real owners of companies are, the first major country to have such a list in place; the information it contains will be free for anyone to access.
When we came into office, there were foreigners not paying capital gains tax when selling their UK homes, private equity managers paying a lower rate of tax than the people who cleaned their offices, and rich homebuyers getting away without paying stamp duty because houses were enveloped within companies. We have put an end to all those things. In the last Parliament alone we made an unprecedented 40 tax changes to close loopholes, raising £12 billion. In this Parliament we will legislate for more than 25 further measures, forecast to raise £16 billion by 2021. No British Government, Labour or Conservative, have ever taken so much robust action in this area.
The Government is committed to a proportionate, tailored response to improve global tax transparency, including in tax havens. It is wrong to suggest that the UK is anything other than at the global forefront of tackling tax avoidance.
Crown dependencies and overseas territories have already agreed to exchange taxpayer financial account information automatically, and will begin doing so from this September.
They will also provide UK law enforcement and tax agencies with full access to information on the beneficial ownership of companies. The Government have finalised arrangements with all of them except for Anguilla and Guernsey, both of which Minister's believe will follow in the coming days and months.
This will place the overseas territories and Crown dependencies well ahead of many other similar jurisdictions, and also crucially ahead of many of the UK's major international partners, including some states in the United States of America.
The Government will use the anti-corruption summit to encourage consensus not just on exchanging information, but on publishing such information and putting it into the public domain, as we are doing in the UK. Ministers want everyone with a stake in fighting corruption, from law enforcement, to civil society and the media, to be able to use those data and help the authorities root out and deter wrongdoing.
The Prime Minister has also taken the unprecedented step of publishing his tax return and has been more transparent about his arrangements than any other Prime Minister.
He and his wife did own shares in a unit trust, but before the 2010 election he sold all the stocks and shares he owned to ensure there was no conflict of interest. These were subject to all UK taxes in all the normal ways and he previously paid Income Tax on the dividends.
As Graham Aaronson QC, Britain's leading tax lawyer, has said, it would be 'quite wrong' to describe this as tax avoidance, in fact the unit trust was set up at the time to invest in dollar denominated shares, as many other people did at the time. The Prime Minister currently does not own any shares, unit trusts or investments. And he will not benefit from any family trusts in the future.
If we are going to encourage more people from all walks of life to apply to become MPs then publication of tax returns will put even more people off from applying. I agree that there is a strong case for the publication of tax returns for the Prime Minister, Chancellor and their opposite numbers. However, tax returns have no impact on the ability of MPs to represent their constituents and that is why MPs are already subject to strict declaration rules. Therefore after careful consideration I won't be publishing my tax return at this time.