A 2 per cent tax on the UK revenues of large digital companies such as Google was announced in the budget

The chancellor’s tax on technology giants is impractical “gesture politics” and companies are likely to wriggle out of paying it, experts warn.

Philip Hammond said in the budget that Britain would act unilaterally to levy a 2 per cent charge on the UK revenues of large digital companies by 2020 to ensure that they paid their fair share of tax — unless a better international arrangement was made sooner.

However, accounting experts have pointed out flaws in the planned digital services tax and the tech industry’s lobbying machine is already fighting what it calls a “chilling” measure.

The mooted tax raid comes after years of criticism of multinational companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook, which pay small amounts of UK tax in relation to