A ban on external accountants working inside government, to stop them telling clients about tax loopholes they have found, has been urged by MPs. The recommendation is in a report on tax avoidance by the Commons Public Accounts Committee. The MPs said HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) was in a "battle it cannot win" against the accountancy firms who have thousands of people giving advice. HMRC said it was "aggressively fighting" tax avoidance and "winning". In its latest report on tax avoidance, the committee turned its attention to accountancy firms after previously criticising multinational companies, including Starbucks, Amazon and Google, for the amount of corporation tax they paid.....Read more here