Barclays stockpiles 'losses' to soften tax obligations The results also revealed that the bank reduced its corporate tax bill by £365m in 2010 to £1.52bn by using deferred tax assets - £205m of which arose "from the reorganisation of Spanish securitisation financing." Barclays has run into controversy before over its tax arrangements. Two years ago a whistleblower leaked documents which purported to show that Barclays was using a network of subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg to reduce its tax bill. Earlier this year, chief executive Bob Diamond was forced to reveal that the bank operated nearly 300 subsidiaries in tax havens and had paid just £113m of corporation tax in the UK in 2009 - a year in which it handed out £3.4bn in bonuses. In recent weeks the amount of tax big business pays has been under scrutiny after Dave Hartnett, the permanent Secretary for HM Revenue & Customs, has been heavily criticised for waiving a £10m tax bill for investment bank Goldman Sachs. Barclays said it paid £2.83bn in tax to the UK Exchequer in 2010, the bulk of which was income tax and National Insurance contributions on employees' salaries, as well as the one-off bonus tax. About 60pc of its profits are earned outside the UK and Ireland, making them subject to corporation tax in other countries. RBS and Lloyds have larger "tax losses carried forward" than Barclays, reflecting the record-breaking losses they sustained in the depths of the crisis. Lloyds has £6.57bn, and RBS £4.27bn, according to their respective annual reports, compared with £1.56bn at Barclays. RBS's annual report stated: "The group's cumulative [tax] losses are principally attributable to the recent unparalleled market conditions." According to the European Banking Authority, HSBC will have no deferred tax assets this year. However, the 2010 results show that it had $7bn (£4.5bn) last year - generated mostly in the US. Barclays stressed that it has signed up to the UK code of practice on tax and that it is entirely transparent with HM Revenue & Customs. A spokesman said: "Barclays pays all the tax due in all the countries in which we operate. We are signatories of the UK Government's code of conduct on tax and comply with the spirit and letter of the tax code. To ensure banks contribute to the UK Exchequer on top of payroll taxes, George Osborne has introduced the bank levy to raise £2.7bn a year from the industry.