BRITAIN is “by far” the world’s greatest enabler of corporate tax avoidance, according to new research by the Tax Justice Network.

British territories and dependencies made up four of the top 10 countries on the Corporate Tax Haven Index. At the top of the list are the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Crown dependency Jersey was seventh on the list behind the Netherlands, Switzerland and Luxembourg. Singapore, the Bahamas and Hong Kong are also in the top 10. Britain ranked 13th.

The index compares how aggressively 64 jurisdictions use tax cuts, loopholes and secrecy to attract multinational activity.

The network said Britain has “single-handedly done the most to break down the global corporate tax system, accounting for over a third of the world’s corporate tax avoidance risks.”

Eight out of the 10 jurisdictions whose systems received the highest scores were part of the British network of territories and dependencies.

These were the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Anguilla, the Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey.

The network is calling on governments to introduce a single tax approach that will align multinational firms’ taxable profits with the location of their economic activity.

It added that the scale at which jurisdictions have enabled tax avoidance risks made countries’ corporate tax rates “meaningless.”

The network’s chief executive Alex Cobham said some of the richest countries have waged a tax war “so corrosive it had broken the global corporate tax system beyond repair.”

He added: “The hypocrisy revealed by the Corporate Tax Haven Index is sickening.

“The ability of governments across the world to tax multinational corporations in order to pay teachers’ wages, build hospitals and ensure a level playing field for local businesses has been deliberately and ruthlessly undermined.”

Economist and tax justice campaigner Richard Murphy told the Star that the British government “refuses” to do anything about corporate tax avoidance, and the argument that nothing can be done about it is “nonsense.”

He said it was “hideous” that Companies House is poorly maintained and claimed that firms can be easily set up by anyone anywhere without ID checks or assessments of money laundering.

Mr Murphy added: “People can get away with abusing the system and no-one bothers to find out. No-one at all in the government cares. This means tax havens operate with impunity.”

He also said that it is “worrying” that financial services firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and Deloitte “underpin” the structures of tax havens and that “without them corporate tax avoidance couldn’t happen.”