The survey of multinational CFOs found that three quarters (74%) said ongoing political debate about new tax measures and the absence of legislative stability and consistency was having an impact on business confidence.

Frédéric Donnedieu de Vabres, chairman of Taxand, said: ‘Worldwide, we have seen political leaders speak at length about the taxation of multinationals, proposing sweeping change on a national and international level, from the transaction tax in Europe, to the OECD’s initiative around Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), to retrospective tax litigation charges in parts of Asia. This uncertainty around tax is damaging multinationals’ confidence to invest and subsequently hindering the global recovery.’

Three quarters (76%) of respondents said that media coverage of corporate tax planning activity has a detrimental impact on a company’s reputation, and a third (31%) said the intense media focus on the issue had made them change their approach to tax planning.

Transfer pricing was seen as the most challenging aspect of global taxation, while 74% of respondents felt that their tax authority has been more focused on substance in the last year and 82% felt that their tax authority had been co-operating more with other tax authorities around the world over the past year.

Most (78%) reported a rise in compliance costs and 73% said tax audits were becoming more frequent as governments look to increase tax revenues. The majority (70%) said corporate tax would remain high on the board’s agenda this year with legislative changes set to continue. However, less than half felt a global profit split approach to tax reform is a realistic solution for corporate taxation.

Separate research commissioned by ACCA has thrown doubt on the view that the UK or US corporate income tax base is being eroded as a result of aggressive tax planning by multinational corporations.

Sinclair Davidson, author of the report and professor at the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing at RMIT University in Australia, said: It is one thing to point out that multinational corporations do not pay tax in some jurisdictions but that says nothing about the actual corporate income tax base. To the extent that corporate income tax revenues have fallen in recent years, this is more likely to be a result of poor economic conditions than aggressive tax planning.’

The report also states that advanced economies face a fiscal challenge, which creates the environment for a ‘tax grab’.

Davidson said: 'It is not clear that tampering with the tried and tested norms of corporate income tax to possibly generate more corporate income tax revenue while reducing the corporate income tax collected in foreign economies, and possibly reducing investment, employment and consumption at home, is good policy.'

Although the Taxand sample was only 54 companies, over half of the survey respondents generate over $1bn in revenues each year.