There's a real cost here. Glencore's results also confirm that its trading arm has has taken advantage of Iran-war-driven chaos in the energy markets to make bumper profits, which are up by a near-record 142%

➡️ And, as we first revealed, Glencore is going for secret, binding arbitration. /11

➡️ the tax at stake in its dispute has continued to rise. In 2025 it was at £1.5bn, and it's now reached £1.6bn. /10

Buried in today's half-year results from commodities giant Glencore is confirmation of a scoop that @taxwatch.bsky.social and The Observer published in May 🧵

That's not a bad idea per se: the estimated tax gap is just shy of £60bn and rising. Shrinking it is urgent. /3

This isn't party-political: last week we also saw the Chancellor announce "summer days out" VAT cuts that are an invitation to the kinds of definitional cases involving giant marshmallows that already clog up the Tax Tribunal, earning fees for specialist indirect tax lawyers.

🔎 For a deeper look at how HMRC believes one oil/gas trading company has shifted over a billion pounds of profits offshore - in ways that this proposed measure won't touch at all - see our latest report here: taxwatchuk.org/private-just...

Historically, big businesses including the oil/gas sector have welcomed the (elective) foreign branch exemption, and other moves to territorialise the UK's tax base, as enhancing tax competition. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7562...

When we started looking into tax disputes over where oil & gas traders were booking their profits, few people were talking about it. Now the government propose to fund help with energy costs by cracking down on energy traders manipulating foreign profits and losses to reduce UK tax.

And now new measures in this year’s Finance Act give large multinationals the automatic right in the future to closed-door negotiations - and in many cases to secret private arbitration - to deal with Diverted Profits tax bills

That’s what has happened here: since 2019, Glencore’s outsize UK tax bill has been moved to informal closed-door negotiations in Geneva - even though HMRC insists publicly that diverted profit tax bills aren’t eligible for this kind of negotiation and arbitration

Glencore Energy UK Ltd has made nearly $1 trillion (£730 bn) in revenues by trading oil and gas since 2009, and declared tax liabilities of just $76 million (£57 million). Last week Glencore announced its trading teams were making record profits amidst oil market price spikes

While fuel bills go up, the £1.5bn tax bill of one of the world’s biggest oil traders – eyeing bumper profits from war in the Gulf – is still unsettled. Why? Because the UK wants to handle big companies' tax avoidance claims in secret foreign negotiations rather than UK courts🧵

Councils could secure a tax debt on the property. But a charging order takes time and expense, and doesn't help if the property isn't sold or remortgaged.

➡️ Criminal prosecutions: still at less than half the pre-pandemic level. Partly a problem with court backlogs (charging decisions are rising). Nonetheless more people were prosecuted for fishing offences than for tax fraud in 2024-25.

Figures which TaxWatch obtained for our 2025 State of Tax Administration report lays out the full problem: taxwatchuk.org/wp-content/u...

"Aggressive tax avoidance & tax evasion have become decriminalised, not through any change in the law but through something far more corrosive: lack of enforcement" Finance Bill 25-26 has new powers against tax schemers. But existing ones aren't being used, says @philbrickellmp.bsky.social

➡️ Meanwhile: nine-tenths of the historic increase in the UK tax take during this Parliament is due to come from wages. Taxpayers shouldering this increase might well ask a simple question: /10

How did this happen, and why aren't we talking about it? ➡️ In July 2025, the Chancellor & other G7 fin mins unilaterally announced that in response to US tax and tariff threats, US-headquartered multinationals would be exempted from 2 of 3 international ‘Pillar 2’ taxes. /4

Changes since November to countries signing up to the 'Pillar 2' deal - some of which may be a reaction to the US exemption from these minimum taxes - are expected to cost another £1.5 bn to 28/29, or £500, annually. That's £1.2bn a year by the end of this Parliament. /2

One major story slipped out with today's OBR Forecast, and without any public comment: 🌎A global tax carve-out for US multinationals, pushed by the UK and G7 to appease the US, is expected to let corporate giants off over £2bn of tax by 2028/29. That's £700m a year 🧵/1

Getting this right matters. Ensuring large businesses pay their due taxes is a very effective use of public money: every £ spent on big business compliance in 2024-25 generated £58 of extra revenue. (To compare, the ROI in non-wealthy individuals’ tax compliance was just £6.50.)

➡️And despite the £2 bn rise in diverted profit assessments of a smallish hardcore - almost the definition of what HMRC considers to be aggressive big business tax positions - HMRC has told TaxWatch that fewer than five cases with a diverted profits element are being litigated.

HMRC is chasing more taxes it believes are missing from big companies’ tax returns. Strikingly, today’s @NAOorguk report tells us that the stock of “tax under consideration” in tax enquiries with large companies grew by over £17bn in just the 6 months from March to Sept 2025. /7

The NAO attributes this recent increase to a rise in the VAT subset of the gap, which is notoriously volatile due to trade fluctuations. That said: a similar trend is actually visible in large businesses’ missing corporation tax, which should be much less volatile. /5

The idea that some big businesses may still be pushing the boundaries of the acceptable is in part borne out by HMRC’s own estimates of the large business ‘tax gap’: up by £1.9bn since 2017-18 after a long downward trend since 2005-06. /4

We're told the days of large corporates buying off-the-peg tax schemes or shifting profits to tax havens are over. Are big business now 😇tax saints or still 👿tax sinners? taxwatchuk.org/big-corporat... 🧵

Big projects are difficult, whether it’s Making Tax Digital or the Single Trade Window. In this case, HMRC entrusted private companies to deliver, paid them £100m, and have little to show for it. /3

And though we've raised questions about HMRC’s sky-rocketing estimates of the small business tax gap, compared to estimates for wealthier taxpayer groups, nonetheless if HMRC’s figures are even half right then it’s hard to say that the pendulum has swung too far yet. /14

Both were a response to the dawning realisation around 2020 that ballooning R&D credit expenditure since 2014 was due partly to an overlooked tsunami of error and fraud. /6