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Article

17 Feb 2015

Author:
Shane Darcy, Irish Centre for Human Rights

Business & human rights agenda lacks focus on corporate tax avoidance, says academic

"Corporation tax & the UN Business and Human Rights agenda", 16 Feb 2015

...A number of States, Ireland included, are in the process of developing a national implementation plan for the Guiding Principles...Discussions are also underway...about a[n]...international treaty on business and human rights...Given the dominance of CSR in recent decades, it is worth considering whether taxation has featured in the...commitments made by companies. The short answer is no – ...the issues of tax payment and tax avoidance "have largely been absent from the CSR agenda"... Ireland's national plan on corporate social responsibility does address tax...but it treats tax as a legal compliance matter only, and because of the...claim that tax avoidance is legal, this approach does not press companies to think about the social impact of avoiding tax...Taxation did not feature in the work of the Special Representative John Ruggie...and is not mentioned in the Guiding Principles...[Refers to Apple, Barclays, Boston Scientific, HSBC, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Vodafone]