The Big Four accountancy firms' tax chiefs are to face a grilling by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) over their role in the tax avoidance row that has engulfed a swathe of multinationals such as Starbucks, Amazon and Google on 31 January.
The announcement contradicts a PAC spokesman who in December, who thought it unlikely that the firms would be called to appear before March 2013 at the earliest.
KPMG's head of tax, Jane McCormick, will now join Deloitte head of tax policyBill Dodwell, PwC's top tax guru, Kevin Nicholson and John Dixon, tax policy chief at Ernst & Young, are all set to appear.
In December, PAC chair Margaret Hodge told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'The certainty that we want, particularly from the big four accountancy firms - who have a duty to lead by example - is that, in the advice they give to their clients, they are not advising how to engage in aggressive tax avoidance schemes.'
The spat has ignited the debate about how multinational companies operating in the UK - many of them advised by the Big Four - enjoy a distinct competitive advantage over their UK-based competitors through their ability to legally use tax havens.
Hodge said firms not taking a tough stand on the issue should be denied lucrative government outsourcing contracts.
'If we are to promote a culture change in the UK, we have got to take action now,' she said. 'I think using the power of the public purse to purchase contracts is an important power that we have.
Recent research by the Tax Justice Network and the BBC found that the Big Four had over 200 offices scattered over 45 of the world's lowest-tax jurisdictions, including Liechtenstein, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
The furore caused Starbucks to cave in to public pressure and announce that it will pay an extra £10m a year in corporation tax in the UK until it turns a profit. Since it opened in the UK in 1998 the company has racked up over £3bn in coffee sales, and opened 735 outlets but paid only £8.6m in income taxes while commanding close to a third of coffee sales in the UK.