An anti-poverty charity has renewed its calls for the government to investigate Alliance Boots' tax arrangements, after UK officials rejected allegations that the health and beauty giant was failing to comply with international guidelines.

Alliance Boots welcomed an assessment by an independent economic regulator working under the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), published last week (June 16). It found that War on Want's allegations that the pharmacy company had breached international economic guidelines were "not material and substantiated".

Alliance Boots told C+D it practiced "strong corporate governance" and exercised "full transparency" in its financial disclosures. It had "immediately refuted the specific allegations", which it considered to be inaccurate and defamatory, it stressed.

But War on Want told C+D on Friday (June 20) that "serious questions" remained around the transparency of Alliance Boots' financial transactions and HMRC must "step up to the plate" and investigate the charity's concerns.

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	In a joint complaint to the UK contact point for the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) guidelines last year, War on Want and US trade union federation Change to Win alleged that Alliance Boots had violated OECD guidance on disclosing financial transactions.

The organisations alleged that the company had failed to disclose the necessary level of detail about "a series of transactions" worth more than £400 million between Alliance Boots and entities "apparently controlled, directly or indirectly" by chief executive Stefano Pessina, which took place between 2011 and 2013.

These transactions had "shifted profits" from the UK to tax havens, resulting in "avoided taxes at a great cost to the UK public", the organisations said in their original complaint.

But the independent regulator ruled last week that the complainants had "failed to substantiate" that Alliance Boots was obliged to provide further details of the transactions beyond those published in its financial statements, or why disclosing extra information was "likely to improve public understanding of the enterprise and its interaction with society".

Alliance Boots queried why the complainants had not taken up the offer of an initial meeting with itself and the regulator to discuss the allegations, but War on Want said the possibility for such a meeting was "not clearly communicated" to it at the time.

War on Want senior economic justice campaigner Owen Espley said questions remained about whether Alliance Boots was using "limited liability partner structures" to hide its financial transactions.

"The failure by national contact point for the OECD to take up the complaint against Alliance Boots' opaque tax dealings throws the ball back into HMRC's court," he added.

HMRC told C+D it did not comment on the tax affairs of individual companies.

Last year, Alliance Boots hit back at accusations by War on Want, Change to Win and trade union Unite that it had avoided paying £1.1 billion in UK taxes since it was privatised in 2007. At the time, Alliance Boots argued it "fully complied" with tax laws in every country in which it operated.

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