I say good luck to those protestors. How about forming a group of companies committed to paying their tax to put extra pressure on those multi-nationals seeking to avoid it?

But I’m having difficulty finding companies to join! I asked our accountants if any of their clients were happy to pay their tax in full. He thought for a moment, casting his mind over hundreds of companies, and said “maybe one”. I wrote before of finding, when looking for a new auditor, that the focus of nearly every auditor we met was how to help me avoid paying tax.

Where is our sense of social responsibility? We expect to get the benefits of public spending. We expect our workforce to be educated, we expect healthcare for when we or they are ill, we expect to be protected against crime, we expect good transport and infrastructure.

I don’t want to seem holier than thou. To be honest, we haven’t made a lot of profit in the two years of recession. But when we did well in the previous years, it seemed only appropriate to pay our fair share.

So next time you hear a representative of a company, whether large or small, talking about corporate social responsibility and their contribution to society, ask them a simple question: Is their company committed to paying their full UK tax bill?