Whisky-maker Whyte and Mackay likes to talk up its Scottish heritage -- but the truth is, the company is owned in a Caribbean tax haven.

While almost one in five people in Scotland are living in poverty, Whyte & Mackay is dodging millions in taxes.

Our taxation system is broken. Ordinary people have no choice but to pay what they owe society -- but big corporations can wheedle out of it by setting up “shell companies” in offshore tax havens. And they’re protected by a shroud of secrecy -- with the complicity of the UK government.

Theresa May has promised to crack down on tax havens, and we urgently need to ramp up the pressure so she turns that promise into meaningful action.

Tell Theresa May to demand transparency from British tax havens!

In 2015, Whyte and Mackay paid just £172,000 in income tax -- on profits of £24 million. That’s an effective tax rate of less than 1%. The 160-year-old firm could get away with it because it’s ultimately owned in the British Virgin Islands, by a company called Emperador International Limited. And the UK government lets British tax havens get away with murder.

Cameron promised to demand that the UK’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies list companies' owners in a public register. It sounds like a small step, but this increased transparency would go a long way to stopping corporations’ use of shell companies registered in tax havens to avoid paying taxes.

But he never delivered -- and now it’s down to us to make sure his successor, Theresa May, makes good on his promise.

The SumOfUs community has been at the forefront of clamping down on tax dodging. Because of SumOfUs members like you, we’re pursuing a groundbreaking case against HSBC for helping Britain’s richest evade tax. And for this, we made front page news.

But clearly we need to do more. To win on tax dodging, we need to fight the tax havens that are destroying our society, by allowing the world’s richest people and corporations to dodge UK taxes that fund essential public services like the NHS. And the first step to doing that is increasing transparency in those tax havens.

Tell Theresa May to make British tax havens publish registers of companies’ owners.