LONDON: AstraZeneca, one of Britain’s largest businesses, is using a multimillion-pound tax avoidance scheme in the Netherlands, set up months after the UK relaxed its tax laws for multinationals in 2013.
A Guardian investigation has found the pharmaceutical giant created the scheme using $2.7bn (£1.8bn) of internal group loans routed through its Dutch subsidiaries.
The company paid no corporation tax in the UK, despite having made global profits in 2013 and 2014 totalling $4.5bn. It was legally able to do so partly by securing some UK tax deductions from the Dutch lending structure as well as by offsetting high running costs and investment at its UK operations and using other tax breaks, some relating to new medicine research and development.
