PETITION: FTSE 4

Developing countries lose out on an estimated $160bn every year - more than they get in international aid - because of tax dodging  by unscrupulous companies.

This money could be paying for services like sanitation, access to water, health and education. Instead, 270m children don't have access to health services and 72m primary-school-aged children aren't getting educated.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Some of the biggest companies in the UK have the power to help end poverty and get these services provided.

We've picked four FTSE100 companies because they can lead from the inside, and raise the call for new global accounting rules that require firms to report the profits made and taxes paid in every country they operate in. This would help poor countries and their citizens trace the taxes they’re owed.

ACTION

[1]
Vodafone is a leading international mobile telecommunications company. It operates in 31 countries, including Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and India.

Click on the link or copy and paste the text below and e-mail to [email protected]. Please copy [email protected] into your e-mail.

Tax Justice!

Dear Mr Colao,

Worldwide, millions of people depend on your network.

And yet hundreds of millions cannot depend on accessing even the most basic services such as health, education or sanitation. Governments would have adequate resources to provide these if there were a fairer, more transparent global tax system in place.

Please make the call for a more transparent tax system by supporting a new international accounting standard requiring companies to declare their profits made and taxes paid in every country where they operate.

Send a message to the International Accounting Standards Board (and to your auditor) asking the IASB to introduce this new accounting standard.

‘Power to you’ is your advertising slogan – but let’s also give some power back to the world’s poorest through a fairer and more transparent tax system.

Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Your signature

[2]
Unilever's products, which include Walls sausages, Persil, Vaseline and Marmite, are used 2bn times a day. It employs 163,000 people in more than 100 countries.

Click on the link or copy and paste the text below and e-mail to [email protected]. Please copy [email protected] into your e-mail.

Tax Justice!

Dear Mr Polman

Unilever sells its products to 160 million people every day. Meanwhile, 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation, and 1.1 billion have inadequate access to water, according to the World Health Organisation.

Can Unilever bring sunlight into these people’s lives as William Lever did for his workers when he built Port Sunlight?

Please help us clean up the global tax system and wipe away tax secrecy. Greater tax transparency would enable developing countries to provide healthcare, sanitation and other services to their poorest citizens.

Please support a new international accounting standard requiring companies to declare their profits made and taxes paid in every country where they operate.

Ask your auditor to back this and the International Accounting Standards Board to introduce it.

Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Your signature

Petition
Send a message to the other two of the FTSE 4 by signing our petitions:

TUI Travel [3]

Intercontinental Hotels Group [4]

Final CAS logo small[1].jpg [5]