When she was elected chair of the public accounts committee, Margaret Hodge did not expect her work to be especially exciting. And when I began her book about that work, I was not expecting a thrill a minute either.

Thankfully, we were both pleasantly surprised. As the crusading chair of the powerful PAC, Hodge led high-profile parliamentary investigations of multinationals including Starbucks, Microsoft, Amazon and HSBC. She also examined and publicly criticised the behaviour of HMRC and other civil service departments, which she believes enjoyed rather too cosy a relationship with the private sector.

Her work was often unpopular. The then head of the civil service accused her of presiding over a ‘theatrical exercise in public humiliation’ after she insisted that a recalcitrant Goldman Sachs executive give testimony to the PAC under oath. In 2013, a trade publication branded her ‘Tax Prat of the Year’, claiming that Hodge’s ‘idiosyncratic and ill-informed views about tax avoidance’ had ‘made [the PAC] a joke to those who understand the subject.’

However, her confidence in her approach never wavered. In Hodge’s new book she takes aim at the tax professionals, like the journalist quoted above, who draw spurious distinctions between ‘those who understand’ the system and the ordinary taxpayers to whom the system should be accountable.

Hodge’s perspective is as a non-expert outsider to the tax world, and the entire book is premised on her belief that the behaviour of large multinationals which avoid tax should not be assessed purely according to the law, but according to a commonsense understanding of fairness and morality.

And indeed, it is becoming clear that her views are by no means idiosyncratic – public outrage at the behaviour of large multinationals has exploded in recent years, built on the revelations of whistleblowers, investigative journalists and the PAC itself. At the domestic level, the Conservative government has been forced to take a much tougher line on companies like Google. And at European Union level, the landmark ruling against Ireland’s sweetheart deal with Apple clearly demonstrates that the kind of convoluted tax practices Hodge describes are under very serious threat.

However, while it is easy to argue that morality should play a role in policy, actually implementing change in this area is extraordinarily complex. There is no question but that multinationals should be more accountable, HMRC more transparent and the tax code more streamlined. But, given the enormous complexity of the laws and regulations in question, there is no straightforward way to solve many of the problems that exist.

Overall, however, Hodge’s argument is one that any reasonable taxpayer can and should get behind. As she writes, ‘we owe it to the thousands of brilliant public servants, to the millions who struggle each month to make ends meet while paying their taxes without question, and to those who depend on public services in their daily lives, to do better.’

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Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin is editor of Left Foot Forward

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Called to Account: How Corporate Bad Behaviour and Government Waste Combine to Cost Us Millions
Margaret Hodge MP
Little, Brown | 390pp | £18.99