Category: Tax
Engagement with household name companies is led by Switzerland’s Ethos Foundation Engagement with household name companies is led by Switzerland’s Ethos Foundation Engagement with household name companies is led by Switzerland’s Ethos Foundation
Dec 17th, 2019
The Ethos Foundation, Swiss pension fund-backed body, is heading up a major new engagement on “aggressive” tax practices at major US corporations for Shareholders for Change (SfC), the new European institutional investor group.
The companies targeted are Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, McDonalds and Starbucks.
The justification for the engagement is that the six have relatively few physical assets but considerable intangible assets, such as intellectual property or brands, which means they are “particularly exposed to risks related to aggressive tax practices”.
They were selected “based on a media analysis through RepRisk linking them to significant and recurring negative news flow around the topic of taxes”.
The engagement has five priorities:
1. Responsibility for the tax policy rests with the board of directors
2. The principles of tax responsibility are incorporated in a dedicated, publicly available policy
3. The company pays…