Howard Schultz, chairman, president and chief executive of Starbucks, has said that people “shouldn’t believe everything you read in a newspaper” over the tax scandal that hit the company in 2012.
Answering a question put to him by The Times at EY’s World Entrepreneur of the Year competition in Monte Carlo, Schultz said: “I can tell you unequivocally that we have done the right thing with regards to the tax issue that you are referring to, I promise you that.”
He insisted that Starbucks was committed to paying the right level of tax because it wants to “do the right thing in every aspect of our business”.
Schultz said that the coverage of the affair “took on a life of its own” and that Starbucks giant had been portrayed in “a pretty bad way”.
The company was heavily criticised by MPs and tax campaigners in 2012 when a Reuters investigation revealed that it had paid only £8.6m in UK corporation tax in the preceding 14 years despite £3bn in sales.
Starbucks paid no corporation tax in the UK between 2008 and 2013 because of a lack of profits.