The UK has led international efforts to tackle avoidance by multinationals, including through the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (“BEPS”) Project which looks at aggressive tax planning strategies that exploit tax rules to artificially shift profits to low tax jurisdictions where there is little or no economic activity.

This international collaboration has led to the introduction of hybrid mismatch rules that prevent multinationals exploiting differences in the tax systems of different countries, a requirement for UK headed large businesses to provide HMRC with a country-by-country report, detailing their global profits, tax and assets to ensure they are paying the correct tax on all their UK activity, and a Corporate Interest Restriction that protects against companies using intra-group loans to shift profits overseas.

Alongside these multilateral efforts are UK domestic rules that have complemented these changes.

In April 2015, the UK Government introduced the Diverted Profits Tax (‘DPT’). DPT was designed to counter contrived arrangements used by multinational corporations to shift their profits offshore and avoid paying tax in the UK on their economic activities here.

In January 2019 HMRC launched a new Profit Diversion Compliance Facility (‘PDCF’) to encourage businesses to stop diverting profits and pay what is due. About two-thirds of the large businesses targeted so far have decided to use the facility to bring their tax affairs up to date quickly and efficiently, enabling HMRC to focus even more resources on investigating businesses which continue to divert profits.

Multinationals can often have complicated tax affairs and HMRC are determined to ensure that their profits are correctly attributed, and they are paying all the tax they owe.

Additional information about HMRC’s work to tackle profit diversion by multinational companies is available on GOV.UK along with the most recent Transfer Pricing and Diverted Profits Tax statistics:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transfer-pricing-and-diverted-profits-tax-statistics-2019-to-2020/tackling-profit-diversion-by-multi-national-companies

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transfer-pricing-and-diverted-profits-tax-statistics-2019-to-2020

As members of the European Union, Poland and the Netherlands will need to comply with the European regulations concerning animal welfare standards, including Council Directive 2007/43/EC which lays down minimum rules for the protection of chickens kept for meat production. As we leave the EU, we are committed to maintaining our position as one of the world leaders in animal welfare and want to improve and build upon that record, working in partnership with farmers to support healthier, higher welfare animals.

The UK will continue to show global health leadership by promoting and supporting evidence-based sexual and reproductive health and rights. The full implications of the reinstated and expanded Mexico City policy are not yet clear, but we are closely following developments.