Starbucks and Google - the two US firms riding a crest of negative publicity over accusations of UK tax evasion - have been called up for questioning by the powerful Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

PAC chairman Margaret Hodge, told the Financial Times that the two companies would be grilled by the committee's MPs as part of a session about tax avoidance involving HMRC.

'We want to ask [the companies] for an opportunity to explain why they don't pay proper levels of tax in the UK,' Hodge told the newspaper.

The move follows huge media exposure of the complex tax arrangements allegedly used by a series of global corporations to avoid their UK tax liability.

In October, it emerged that Starbucks had amassed over £3bn in sales but paid no UK taxes for the past three years.

A Reuters report into the coffee chain said that '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.'

The company employs a series of complex methods to minimise its profits and thereby its tax bill, such as paying big royalties to another part of the company for the privilege of using the brand name - at a rate of 6% of sales.

And in the past three years it has paid no UK tax at all despite amassing sales of £1.2bn.

In 2011, the company reported a £33m UK loss on sales of £398m and subsequently paid no corporation tax. It has repeated this series of losses year after year.

Search engine giant, Google also paid just £6m of corporation tax in the UK last year.

Labour MP John Mann said the company - and other web-based business' behaviour was 'disingenuous and immoral'. Speaking to The Independent, Mann said: 'They benefit enormously from the country's internet infrastructure but do nothing to fund it. It's like driving a car with no tax. We would not stand for it on our roads so why stand for it on the net?'

Tax expert Jason Collins of law firm Pinsent Masons, said: 'There is a popular myth that HMRC and the Treasury are so easily charmed by the presence of foreign companies in the UK that they are happy to accept any tax payment that they get,' he said. 'That could hardly be further from the truth.'