Now that the taxman is breathing down the necks of some of the must trusted international corporations operating in the UK, those brands' reputations have fallen.

Amazon, Google and Starbucks will see a decrease in reputation as a result of the revelation that they are shirking their British tax responsibilities. A Parliamentary committee released a report today documenting the issue and encouraging HMRC to enforce its corporate tax policies.

The report says, “We were not convinced that their actions, in using the letter of tax laws both nationally and internationally to immorally minimise their tax obligations, are defensible. They all accepted that the perceived ethical behaviour of corporations could affect consumer behaviour.”

This points to poor corporate practice leading naturally to a decline in reputation in the eyes of the consumer. Starbucks, itself, has acknowledged this decline in a statement saying that it has betrayed the public’s trust in its brand. Starbucks’ BrandIndex ranking has fallen from -0.4 to -9.6 over the past two months.

Similarly, the Google and Amazon indices have also dropped, though not to the same extent. It has also been reported that the Premier League is only paying about 2% corporate tax with some individual clubs paying no tax at all.

Starbucks’ statement has indicated that it will work with HMRC to review its tax approach in the UK, making it the first of the three scrutinised corporations to do so.