It might be strange hearing this from a banker, but there is not enough transparency around tax. The result is a situation that favours Alphabet (owner of Google), Amazon and Apple at potentially the expense of everyone else.



National governments have raced to the bottom when it comes to tax – each vying for a few more jobs and a little more investment in their country. And yet those jobs and that investment come at a cost.



Competition is skewed, the little local guy is paying more tax on smaller profits than the multinational – this stymies local enterprise and stops innovation. The economy becomes ever more reliant on big corporations for jobs and investment and the possibilities for the little guy decrease.



There are fewer possibilities for governments to invest in people. Governments are getting less tax than they should. That means less spent on health, infrastructure, benefits and education. Society doesn’t develop and sooner or later the big corporation will move to somewhere where people have more developed skills – and transport and logistics work better. Leaving countries in much worse shape without local enterprise and an out of date skills base.



Economies become so reliant on big business that governments will do anything to keep them. The will of the people becomes a secondary consideration.



Tax avoidance doesn’t really work for companies

Alleged tax avoidance may have worked for US president-elect Donald Trump and he may think it makes him smart – but it is not a great thing for corporations to engage in. Tax avoidance may create a temporary bump in share value, price/earnings ratios and dividends, but it depletes the long term customer base and is a strategic and reputational negative for most companies.



Healthy societies are ones where the re-distributive element of tax works well. Taxation improves the lot of everyone while maintaining incentives for people to do well. And healthy societies have more people able to buy goods and services. In short a bigger customer base. If companies don’t pay tax they destroy their customer base.



However, much of modern global capitalism is built on the short term. CEOs are around for a few years and they just need to show shareholders what a great job they have done. They’re generally not thinking about what’s going to happen to the company 10 or 20 years later.



This means that only a few, enlightened, companies truly understand the need to pay a fair amount of tax everywhere they trade.



Regulation isn’t happening soon

Global tax regulation would be the perfect solution for this but, realistically, it just isn’t going to happen anytime soon. By the time the international community agrees any regulations business will have moved on and the regulations will be out of date.



And yet there is one way that things can change quickly. Individual governments can make it a condition of market entry that multinational corporations publish how much money they make and how much tax they pay in every jurisdiction they operate in. Companies would have a choice, deny themselves a market presence or be transparent about how much tax they pay globally.



Increasingly, investors (including the bank I work for) want to put their money in companies that demonstrate high standards of corporate responsibility, including on tax. And most company executives I have spoken to are also open to increasing transparency, but only if there is a level playing field.

Companies don’t want to lose their competitive edge by being the only ones to put their tax information out there. They welcome transparency regulation as a way to make sure everyone acts responsibly. Tax transparency is an opportunity to strengthen corporate brands and demonstrate how corporations contribute to the societies they are a part of.



As investors, consumers and citizens we all have a part to play in making this happen. It is time for us to actively engage with the companies whose existence we make possible. We are the ones that can push, cajole and drive the improvements on when and where tax is paid by them. It is the right thing for us to focus on and we can make a difference.