Councils take action on tax dodging

Lisburn and Castlereagh council have become the second council in Northern Ireland and the third in the UK as a whole to agree to vet suppliers to find out if they have committed tax avoidance or evasion.

A campaign led by leading charity, Christian Aid, is asking local authorities to use their spending power as leverage to force large corporations to pay more of the tax they owe.

Christian Aid’s campaign coordinator, David Thomas, said: “It is only right that large companies bidding for lucrative tax-payer funded council contracts should be expected to be socially responsible tax-payers themselves.”