The row led coffee chain Starbucks to agree to pay more UK corporation tax.
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The UK corporation tax rate is currently 23% and is set to drop to 21% next year.
The firms have paid little UK corporation tax although they argue that they operate within tax rules.
Mr Johnson added that Starbucks should be praised for announcing that going forward it would voluntarily pay UK corporation tax.
Coffee chain Starbucks has agreed to pay more UK corporation tax, after a public outcry over how little it pays.
As it happens, the finance director of a huge British multinational, Vodafone, recently wrote a letter to journalists explaining why it paid no UK corporation tax in 2011-12.
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He warned of a "race to the bottom" if the regions and nations of the UK controlled their own corporation tax rates.
In my native UK the corporation pays corporation tax on all profits.
UK-based companies pay corporation tax on their taxable profits wherever they are made.
But the UK Government is already cutting corporation tax, down to 23% next April and 22% the year after that.
In other words, UK companies do not pay corporation tax to another country on the profits from sales in that country, unless they trade through a branch based there.
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Also as of 1 April, corporation tax in the UK falls by 1% to 24%.
The current main rate of corporation tax in the UK is 23%, which was already due to fall to 21% next year.
The first minister would only call for the devolution of corporation tax should the UK Government decide to transfer the power to the other devolved institutions.
New laws and prosecutions could be necessary to force Amazon, Google and other multinationals pay a fairer amount of corporation tax in the UK, according to MPs.
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Multinationals such as Starbucks, Google and Amazon have come under fire for paying little or no corporation tax despite generating UK sales of hundreds of millions of pounds.
Which is why today's report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which points out that as huge and clever multinationals they exploit legal devices to minimise their liability to corporation tax in the UK, is of moment.
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Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook recently had to defend his company's tax policies in front of a congressional committee, while Google, Amazon and Starbucks have also been criticised for paying too little corporation tax in the UK - accusations they dispute.
This said that the UK, "despite having a higher corporation tax level than many other countries", has the 16th most business-friendly tax regime.
This came after much public anger over the revelation of how little corporation tax it pays in the UK, with some people saying they would boycott its outlets.
Starbucks' announcement comes after much public anger over the revelation of how little corporation tax it pays in the UK, with some people saying they would boycott its outlets.
Today's Scottish government discussion paper on a separate Scottish corporation tax regime reminds us the UK rate was at 52% of profits in the 1970s, before a downward trend to the current rate of 26%, and further cuts to 23% planned by 2014.
This afternoon in the House of Commons (one part of the British Parliament) a committee will be grilling executives from Amazon, Google and Starbucks over the amount of corporation tax they pay in the UK. There is a really quite gorgeous and wonderful part to this story.
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The rate of corporation tax is 28% in the UK but only 12.5% in the Republic of Ireland.
Mr Osborne said pension, education and welfare reform was helping to make the UK a more competitive economy, while cuts to corporation tax and higher-rate tax were making the country a more attractive place to do business.
He also said the UK was on course to have some of the lowest corporation tax rates in the G20.
Most major economies operate corporation tax in the same way as the UK, so UK-resident companies are treated in a similar way in other countries.
The economic slowdown in the UK as well as a reduction in the rate of corporation tax have led to a 17% drop in corporation tax payments since 2005.
There may be a hidden cost of what has arguably been this country's central industrial policy of the past 30 years, which is that all businesses are for sale to foreigners at the right price: the systematic transfer into overseas hands of so many UK companies may have contributed to long-term erosion of corporation tax revenues.
The profits will not be taxed in the UK. This is not tax avoidance: it is simply the way that corporation tax works.
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