Big Tobacco, Big Avoidance

A new research report from the Investigative Desk in the Netherlands, with support from Dr. Robert Branston and Andy Rowell from the University of Bath’s Tobacco Control Research Group, shows which main tax avoidance methods the Big 4 tobacco companies are using to minimise their tax bill.

The investigation found that in six European countries (Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.K.) tax structures enable the tobacco industry to use various tax avoidance strategies.

The Investigative Desk and the University of Bath discovered that Big Tobacco is using five key tax avoidance methods, these include: shifting dividends; notional (fictitious) interest deduction; profit shifting via intra-firm transactions; royalty payments; and group relief, partly based on internal loans.

You can read the full article here.