Nothing to declare at SABMiller
SABMiller’s stigma as a tax dodger does not seem to want to go away. Four years after the UK charity ActionAid exposed the brewer of depriving poor countries of millions in revenues, the Sunday Times newspaper ran a comment on 29 June 2014 with the opening line: “You could be forgiven for thinking SABMiller’s newish boss Alan Clark has a guilty conscience.”
Readers wondering why he should have one, had to read on. “Keen to underscore its squeaky-clean credentials”, the piece said, SABMiller’s annual report [released on 23 June 2014] shows that it disbursed USD 10.8 billion to governments last year. This is equivalent to 32 percent of its global revenues. Excise was USD 5.6 billion of the total, with corporation tax amounting to USD 1.5 billion. The Sunday Times remarked: “This was a highly respectable 26 percent of its USD 5.6 billion total profit.”
However, when the newspaper dug further into SABMiller’s accounts in order to find out how much Britain’s eighth largest listed company paid to the UK’s taxman, it discovered: nothing.
When the Sunday Times approached SABMiller, the newspaper was given the following explanation: “The costs of operating a UK-based head office outweigh the profitability of our UK trading operation, so we do not currently pay UK corporation tax.”
Concern over the tax paid by the likes of Starbucks, Google and Amazon has drawn political attention to the question of how multibillion-pound corporations structure their tax affairs in the UK.
