The accounting giant helped bus and train operator Stagecoach to concoct an elaborate scheme to “manufacture losses” and dodge £11 million in taxes. Now a court has found that scheme broke the law.

KPMG has a clear code of conduct. It will not, it says, advise clients to set up schemes with the main aim of dodging taxes. But the corporation was intimately involved in Stagecoach’s tax dodge. It even sent its own solicitors to defend Stagecoach in court!

Will you take a minute to tell KPMG to stop helping corporations to dodge taxes?

KPMG: Enforce your code of conduct -- stop advising corporate clients to dodge taxes that belong to the public purse!

KPMG is one of the largest professional services companies in the world, and one of the Big Four accounting firms, along with Deloitte, EY and PwC.

While most of us pay our fair share of taxes and suffer through budget cuts and austerity, this court ruling shows that KPMG is helping large corporations to evade taxes. Even worse, it’s often advising them on how to get around legislation it helped the UK government to write!

It’s an issue that goes right to the heart of what kind of country we want to live in. Our democracy has been captured by the rich and corporate elites and run for their benefit.

SumOfUs members around the world are drawing a line and saying 'no more'. In Canada, tens of thousands of members of our community have challenged KPMG to come clean about its involvement in one of the biggest tax scandals in Canadian history. And here in the UK, we’ve called out HSBC for helping Britain's richest evade tax on an unprecedented scale.

Like all companies, KPMG is only as good as its reputation. If enough of us make a noise, we can show KPMG that it can’t get away with ignoring the law -- and its own code of conduct -- any longer.

KPMG: Stop helping corporate clients to dodge taxes!

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More information:

Stagecoach loses court case over £11m tax avoidance scheme, The Guardian, 7 March 2016