Lloyds heads tax table with £2.3bn bill

LLOYDS Banking Group was the UK’S biggest corporate taxpayer for the second year running last year, after paying £2.3bn in taxes for 2016.

The high street bank stumped up £500m more to the Treasury than the previous year, according to an analysis of Britain’s top companies’ tax records by consultancy PWC.

Lloyds topped the rankings despite it lying 12th in the FTSE 100 index of Britain’s biggest companies, although its nearest blue chip rivals are less focused on the UK and boast much larger international operations.

In a tax strategy report to be published today, the bank will say it believes paying a fair share of taxes is in the “public interest”.

The report will say: “As a responsible business, we share public interest that ‘big business’ contributes its fair share to the UK’S prosperity, which is why we aim to be open and transparent about our approach to tax – including our overall strategy and payments.”

Lloyds’ comments come after another year of big tax controversies, with tech giants Google and Apple facing renewed criticism for paying just £36m and £8m in taxes respectively on £1bn-plus UK revenues.

Lloyds’ tax bill broke down into £710m in irrecoverable VAT, £676m in corporation tax, £375m in national insurance contributions, £253m for the bank levy and £118m under the bank surcharge. Its £2.3bn tax bill exceeds its main rivals HSBC, Barclays and RBS, which each paid £1.7bn, £1.4bn and £1.3bn in UK taxes in 2016 according to their annual reports. In part this is because HSBC and Barclays have much larger international operations, while RBS posted a loss for the year.