You’re hired! Responsible tax wins over workers

People want to work at companies that pay tax responsibly. It’s something the public have told us in surveys and through companies coming to us for the Fair Tax Mark over the past ten years.

But now – in an evolving labour market in which staff shortages are an increasing concern – this is being put to the test and studies are finding that aggressive tax practices can actually be detrimental to recruitment.

For employers, being a responsible corporate taxpayer is no longer just a nice to have. It’s essential to good business.

Employees are good for business

In the age of artificial intelligence, it is worth stating the importance of employees for business. Not only do evolving industries and labour shortages make attracting talent a pressing concern, but also employee satisfaction is strongly linked to business performance.

A Global Happiness and Wellbeing Policy Report in 2019 found higher wellbeing is associated with increased productivity (about a 10% average gain), greater customer satisfaction, lower staff turnover and better financial outcomes. A literature review the previous year yielded similar results.

It is in this environment that good corporate tax practices are shown as desirable to employees and job seekers and may even impact recruitment.

Fair Tax Mark businesses know the importance of their employees, and how responsible tax practices demonstrate this. “Ensuring our standards towards tax are the highest they can be is just one way we can demonstrate to our customers and colleagues our commitment to being a responsible organisation,” James Timpson, former CEO of Timpson Group said when they achieved their Fair Tax Mark.

What do workers want?

Corporate tax avoidance is not a good look. In the United States, research among the S&P 500 in 2021 found that employee perceptions of managers and firms fall following tax avoidance news coverage, with firms in consumer-facing industries suffering the largest perception changes.

People want to know what companies are up to when it comes to tax. A Fair Tax Foundation survey in 2025 found that 78% of the UK public said UK companies of all sizes should have to publicly disclose their tax policies and clarify their attitude to tax avoidance. This was up from 75% the previous year.

But do a company’s corporate tax practices actually influence the behaviour of employees or potential employees?

For the past ten years, the Fair Tax Foundation have commissioned polling in the UK on various aspects of corporate tax conduct. The survey has consistently found the majority of the UK public would rather work for a business that can prove it is paying its fair share of tax.

In 2025 this figure was 75% of respondents, up from 70% the year before.

Attracting talent

Taking this further, a 2025 study found corporate tax aggressiveness may in fact harm a company’s recruitment drive. It looked at 439 final year students in Belgian universities studying a mix of tax and non-tax-related subjects and found that although tax avoidance was not as detrimental to recruitment as tax evasion, it could still have a negative impact because jobseekers were less likely to recommend the tax-avoiding firm to others.

“Tax avoidance could still backfire through missing out on positive word-of-mouth,” one of the report authors, Kenny Dekoster, said.

Stronger still are the findings from a study published just weeks after Dekoster’s. Using a factorial survey experiment, these researchers found that job applicants view companies that engage in aggressive tax avoidance or evasion as less attractive and are less likely to accept offers from them compared with firms using responsible tax strategies.

However, this was tempered by a perception of unfairness of the tax system. The study found job applicants are more tolerant of aggressive tax avoidance or even tax evasion if the tax system is seen to be unfairly disadvantageous to the prospective employer. This has been found in other research, alongside another big factor: pay.

Even our own surveys find pay to be the biggest consideration at a company, which makes complete sense for jobseekers. But others have found that employees are willing to accept lower wages to work in highly socially responsible companies, and are likely to avoid working at companies with tax-avoiding practices unless they are being better compensated for it. But it can also be harder to bargain for higher wages, benefits and treatment at tax-avoiding firms, because their finances are often more opaque.

Being a responsible taxpayer

Increased transparency is making it easier to lift the lid on companies’ tax practices. And potential employees want to do just that and then pass on their recommendations to others.

That means jobseeker preferences are having a real impact on business recruitment – a concern for many in the current climate.

Employees at Fair Tax Mark companies are proud to work for responsible corporate taxpayers – they use Fair Tax mugs, wear Fair Tax hoodies, and get together to celebrate Fair Tax Week.

So if your business is looking to attract and retain the best talent, then responsible tax practices are a no-brainer.