The group looked at seven large tech firms – Adobe, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Meta and Microsoft – to calculate the amount of corporate taxes they would have paid if their British subsidiaries declared profits at the same rate as they declared them worldwide.

The analysis did not suggest that the companies had evaded taxes illegally, but rather looked at the impact of their tax strategies. 

TaxWatch estimated the seven companies had made £60.5bn in UK revenues over the 2021 tax year. The group then applied global profit margins to estimate that the firms had made £14.8bn in UK profits that year.

Using a UK tax rate (19 per cent), this would mean the seven firms would have been liable to pay £2.8bn. However, by looking at the tax paid by UK subsidiaries, TaxWatch estimated that they only paid £753m in UK corporation tax and digital services tax. 

The group stressed that these figures are only estimates, but said they were an important way of highlighting...