LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have unpicked the brain processes involved in teenage alcohol abuse and say their findings help explain why some young people have more of a tendency to binge drink.
A study published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal found that a gene known as RASGRF-2 plays a crucial role in controlling how alcohol stimulates the brain to release dopamine, triggering feelings of reward.
“If people have a genetic variation of the RASGRF-2 gene, alcohol gives them a stronger sense of reward, making them more likely to be heavy drinkers,” said Gunter Schumann, who led the study at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry.
Alcohol and other addictive drugs activate the brain’s dopamine systems, which induces feelings of pleasure and reward.
Worldwide, some 2.5 million people die each year from the harmful use of alcohol, accounting for about 3.8 percent of all deaths, according to the World Health Organisation.
Recent studies also carried out by scientists at the IoP have found that RASGRF-2 is a risk gene for alcohol abuse, but until now the mechanism involved in the process was not clear.
For this study, scientists initially looked at mice who had been modified to have the RASGRF2 gene removed, to see how they reacted to alcohol. They found the lack of RASGRF-2 was linked to a significant reduction in alcohol-seeking activity.
They also discovered that when the mice did consume alcohol, the absence of RASGRF-2 reduced the activity of dopamine-releasing neurons in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) – preventing the brain from releasing dopamine and limiting any sense of reward.
The team then analyzed brain scans of 663 14-year old boys and found that when they were anticipating a reward in a mental test, those with genetic variations to the RASGRF2 gene had more activity in an area of the brain closely linked to the VTA and also involved in dopamine release.
This suggests people with a genetic variation on the RASGRF-2 gene release more dopamine when anticipating a reward, and hence derive more pleasure from it, the scientists said.
To confirm the findings, the team analyzed drinking behavior from the same group of boys two years later when many of them had already begun drinking frequently.
They found that those with the RASGRF-2 gene variation drank more often at the age of 16 than those without it.
“People seek out situations which fulfill their sense of reward and make them happy, so if your brain is wired to find alcohol rewarding, you will seek it out,” Schumann said in a statement about the research. “We now understand the chain of action: how our genes shape this function in our brains and how that, in turn, leads to human behavior.”
Experts writing in The Lancet journal in February said up to 210,000 people in England and Wales will be killed prematurely by alcohol in the next 20 years, with a third of those preventable deaths due to liver disease alone.
Speaking at his first casino conference in Copenhagen two years ago, Christopher Griffin wondered why every demonstration of online gambling looked like casino games that have been played for decades in Las Vegas. Casino executives, he realized, were unprepared for the threat posed by Zynga (ZNGA) and other social game developers intent on bringing elements of online games to gambling and putting their products on smartphones and tablets. “No one was talking about the social aspects of gambling, or the devices in everyone’s pockets,” says Griffin. “It struck me that this is an industry ripe to get its lunch eaten.”
Griffin decided to provide social game developers with tools to create betting games that can be played on mobile devices or a PC. His company, Betable, now lets game companies offer online gambling wherever it’s legal. He’s teamed up with game makers to produce online versions of poker, blackjack, and roulette, and is in the process of adding wagering to social media games.
Depending on the game, players compete with each other or against the game maker. Betable provides a platform for developers to create games in which players bet with real money, and handles the infrastructure, payment, licenses, antifraud procedures, and verification needed to prove a customer is located where online gambling is legal. When first-time players click to indicate they want to wager money, the game prompts them to create a Betable account, and the company’s U.K.-based servers handle all monetary transactions. Because the transactions take place on those servers, Betable’s license isn’t restricted to a physical location, allowing the company to provide a legal gambling platform in countries where gaming isn’t outlawed. Companies split proceeds 50/50 with Betable, say executives at the companies who declined to be identified because the contracts are private.
A Department of Justice opinion last year opened the door for states to legalize most forms of online gambling except sports betting. Many are scrambling to do so. Nevada has begun granting licenses for online poker, and Delaware and New Jersey are on track to follow next year, according to the American Gaming Association. Cowen analyst Doug Creutz says it could take five years before online wagering becomes legal nationwide.
The mobile-gambling business will grow to $ 100 billion worldwide by 2017, according to Juniper Research. With interest in social games showing signs of waning—the number of video game players in the U.S. declined by 5 percent in the last year, according to researcher NPD Group—Zynga and other developers don’t want to wait. Betable, funded by Greylock Partners, Founders Fund, and other venture capitalists, has signed with nearly a dozen companies to offer gambling on mobile devices in the U.K. and other markets. “The European market is fairly well-established, and it’s a market where there’s not been a lot of money invested,” Creutz says.
Typically it takes a minimum of 18 months to get licensed in each country a company wants to operate in and costs millions of dollars to navigate Byzantine rules. Paul Thelen, chief executive officer of Seattle-based game developer Big Fish Games, figures signing with Betable helped shave months off the company’s plan to deliver Big Fish’s slots app in the U.K. The game debuted on mobile devices in October.
Casino operators say they will roll out their own mobile games when they’re legal in the U.S., and some already accept real-money wagers on their websites elsewhere. The social game makers say they have a built-in customer base for real-money wagering. Sixty percent of people who play social games such as Bingo Blingo and Big Fish Casino live outside the U.S., says Josh Yguado, president of Social Gaming Network, a gaming company owned by the founders of Myspace, which announced a partnership with Betable on Nov. 29. “There’s a real art to making a great game that has all the social features around it,” Yguado says. “That’s what we’re good at.”
Big Fish’s Thelen also likes his chances against the incumbents. With Betable’s technology, he can devote resources to delivering features that many land-based casinos offer when they have a captive audience surrounded by bright lights and throngs of customers. A poker game could come with such options as letting players buy a round of virtual drinks for the table, he says. “We can build an experience around the games, with great casual twists that casino makers don’t understand,” he says.
Griffin says casino games are only the beginning for social game developers. At a recent hackathon, designers showed titles that included raising a horse in a fashion similar to FarmVille-type games, and then paying to enter a race against other players’ horses. “Real money resets everything and creates a level playing field,” Griffin says. “This is not an incremental change. This is really a tectonic shift.”
The bottom line: Developers of social games are trying to counter declining interest by bringing casino-style gambling to mobile devices
BRUSSELS (AP) — NATOforeign ministers are expected to approve Turkey‘s request for Patriot anti-missile systems to bolster its defense against possible strikes from neighboring Syria.
NATO foreign ministers are meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels. Parliaments in both nations must approve the deployment, which would also involve several hundred soldiers.
Ankara, which has been highly supportive of the Syrian opposition, wants the Patriots to defend against possible retaliatory attacks by Syrian missiles carrying chemical warheads. NATO leaders have repeatedly said they would provide any assistance Turkey needs.
The Aakash2 is available for $ 40.41 (2,263 rupees), but the government of India will subsidize half the cost for schoolchildren. The tablet is conceived as a tool to help end India‘s rampant illiteracy. Aakash2 will bring school-age children connectivity and unprecidented access to books.
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[More from Mashable: Zynga Holiday Campaign Turns Virtual Goods Into Real-World Donations]
The Aakash2, the second generation of the monumental, ultra-cheap tablet from Indian manufacturer DataWind, arrived in the U.S. Wednesday, with a welcome at the U.N. Headquarters in New York.
DataWind is hoping to prove to the tech and development communities that the $ 40 Aakash2 is faster than its predecessor, the original Aakash, which was much-criticized for its glacial processor.
[More from Mashable: The Top 5 Gadget Innovations of 2012]
You may be wondering what exactly you can put in a tablet that sells for just $ 40.41. The 7-inch Android-powered device has 512 MB of RAM, a 1 Ghz processor, 4 GB of flash memory, a multi-touch capacitative screen, front-facing camera, an internal microphone and speakers. The Aakash2 includes a USB hub, an adapter cable, a wall charger and a 12-month warranty.
Sunseet Singh Tuli, DataWind’s CEO and the visionary behind the tablet, points out that Aakash2 wasn’t conceived for the same demographic as the iPad. It’s developed out of the requisite “frugal innovation” that guides India and the developing world.
“Frugal innovation isn’t about creating an iPad killer, it’s about creating an iPad for him,” said Tuli, pointing to a presentation slide of a lower-class man who’s primary motivation is to receive an education. “This is not a straight commerce effort — it’s an educational effort.”
Even the tablet’s name — Aakash, which means sky in Hindi — references that it was created to awaken students’ potential. The government of India has committed to subsidize 50% of the cost of the device for students, making it available for roughly $ 20.
According to DataWind, the technological breakthrough of the Aakash2, which is why the device can be made so inexpensively, is twofold. First, much of its memory and processing power is transfered to backend servers. Second, the parallel processing environment speeds the user experience in remote areas and congested networks.
The Aakash2 also eliminates hardware features deemed unnecessary for the target audience, such as bluetooth and the HDMI interface. It uses open source software to cut costs, as well.
“This tablet seeks to empower the world’s neediest and bridges the digital divide within our society,” said Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s permanent representative to the U.N. at the launch event. “To us, Aakash2 is the epitome of such high end innovation and excellence.”
The Aakash to was designed and developed in Canada, though it was conceived, assembled and programmed in India. DataWind and the Indian government have received criticism because the process is not entirely domestic, though both said they are committed to moving more of the production process to India when cost allows.
The Indian government has committed to equipping all 220 million students in the country with low-cost computing devices and Internet access over the next five years. To put that number in perspective, just 250,000 tablets were sold in India in 2011. It will cost $ 1.6 billion per year at the rate of equipping 40 million students for each of the next five years. The national government has committed to covering half the cost — $ 800 million per year — and will count on state governments and institutions to cover the remaining 50% of costs. Though it sounds like a daunting figure, $ 800 million is only 5% of India’s annual education budget.
“More and more schools in some of the most impoverished areas are using technology, text messaging and mobile applications to enhance the quality of education and open new doors,” said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday. “Our challenge is to leverage the power of technology and bridge the digital divide.”
During Wednesday’s event at the U.N., Tuli presented Ki-moon with an Aakash2 tablet for each of the U.N. ambassadors.
Not surprisingly, other countries throughout the developing world have noticed the Aakash tablet’s potential. Thailand, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Brazil and Panama have all expressed interest in bringing the low-cost tablet to their students.
“The next arms race is to equip our children with knowledge and information,” Tuli said.
If you’re wondering when you can get your hands on an Aakash2 in the U.S., DataWind plans to begin selling the device in the U.S. in early 2013.
Do you think this low-cost tablet has the power to bridge the digital divide and combat illiteracy? Let us know in the comments.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A new study conducted using a virtual reality game suggests teens may be less likely to try to buy cigarettes at convenience stories if they aren’t sold in plain sight behind the counter.
Requiring stores to hide tobacco product displays is one option some states are considering to curb teen smoking after the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 was passed, according to the study’s lead author.
“We know the retail environment is a very important place for tobacco companies to advertise and market their products,” said Annice Kim, from the independent research institute RTI International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
“They’re prominently displayed at the point of sale, and it exposes all customers, including kids.”
Kim’s team wanted to test the effects of covering up such cigarette displays on teen shopping and opinion. But the researchers couldn’t conduct a real-world experiment because as of yet, no states have banned the displays.
So they designed a virtual reality game and sent more than 1,200 youth, between age 13 and 17, into a simulated online convenience store. Researchers asked the participants to select four items in the store: a snack from the aisles, a drink from the coolers and two products of their choice from the checkout counter.
In some scenarios, the cabinet behind the counter prominently displayed cigarettes, while other teens saw the cabinet closed and the display covered up.
Any teens that tried to ask the cashier for cigarettes were denied because of age – but what the researchers were interested in was how many asked.
Depending on other changes they made to the virtual convenience stores, the researchers found that 16 to 24 percent of teens tried to buy tobacco when the display was open, compared to 9 to 11 percent when it was closed.
In a post-virtual shopping survey, whether cigarettes were openly displayed wasn’t clearly tied to teens’ perceptions of how easy it would be to buy tobacco products if a similar store existed in their neighborhood.
However, 32 percent of youth said they were aware cigarettes were available for sale when the display case was closed in their virtual store, compared to 85 percent of those who had the open version, according to findings published Monday in Pediatrics.
“Policies that require retailers to store tobacco products out of view… could have a positive public health impact,” Kim told Reuters Health.
Still, she said this single study, funded by the New York State Department of Health, would have to be considered along with other evaluations of the display restrictions before making policy recommendations.
One tobacco control researcher not involved in the new study said he thinks there is “strong justification” for hiding cigarette displays from youth, but that this study doesn’t necessarily add much to that debate.
“It certainly shows that tobacco displays get people to think about cigarettes, which is what they’re for,” said Dr. Michael Siegel, from the Boston University School of Public Health.
But, “It can’t be extrapolated into real life, because in real life kids would go to a store when they want to buy cigarettes,” he told Reuters Health.
“I don’t know how many situations there are when a kid is hanging out in a convenience store with nothing to do and says, ‘Oh, I’ll just try a cigarette as long as they’re here.’”
Rather, he said, banning the displays could help prevent youth from being exposed to marketing by cigarette companies and influenced in their attitudes toward smoking.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online December 3, 2012.
Global firms in the UK that pay little or no tax are an “insult” to British businesses, a committee of MPs says.
Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge said HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) needed to be “more aggressive and assertive in confronting corporate tax avoidance”.
Multinationals such as Starbucks and Amazon have come under fire for paying little or no tax.
They generate UK sales of hundreds of millions of pounds.
Starbucks, for example, sold nearly £400m worth of goods in the UK last year, but paid no corporation tax at all, because much of the money it earns in this country is transferred to a sister company in the Netherlands in the form of royalty payments.
HMRC said it already ensured that international companies paid the tax due “in accordance with UK tax law”.
UK-based companies pay corporation tax on their taxable profits wherever they are made. Companies based outside the UK must pay tax on profits made in this country.
Continue reading the main story
Multinationals in the tax spotlight
Starbucks’ UK sales last year were £400m but much of its earnings are paid as royalties to another part of the company.
Amazon generated sales of more than £3.3bn in the UK last year but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits, and is under investigation by the UK tax authorities, according to the Guardian newspaper.
Apple paid less than 2% corporation tax on its profits outside the US, paying $ 713m (£445m) on foreign pre-tax profits of $ 36.8bn.
Google’s UK unit paid £6m to the Treasury in 2011 on UK turnover of £395m, according to the Telegraph newspaper.
Source: Various
The influential committee’s report comes after it took evidence in November from executives from Starbucks, Google and Amazon about the amount of corporation tax the companies have paid in the UK.
‘Evasive evidence’
Margaret Hodge told the BBC that there was a danger corporation tax was becoming “voluntary” and that this had to change.
“These global companies are making money in the UK. All we are saying is that if you have economic activities in the UK you are making profits and tax is payable on that,” she said.
It emerged on Sunday that coffee shop chain Starbucks is in talks with HMRC about the amount of tax it pays.
Meanwhile, Chancellor George Osborne will unveil later details of £154m of funding to help tackle tax avoidance and evasion, amid public concern over the tax affairs of major international companies and wealthy individuals.
Continue reading the main story
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Although they employ many thousands of people in Britain, it is unclear whether collectively they are net creators or destroyers of employment”
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The money will be used to take on extra staff to investigate high earners who aggressively avoid or evade paying tax and global firms that use legal loopholes to move profits out of the UK.
The funding is expected to help bring in about £2bn a year for HMRC.
In the report, Mrs Hodge said the level of tax taken from multinational firms with large UK operations was, “outrageous and an insult to British businesses and individuals who pay their fair share”.
Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge: “It is time for HMRC to get a grip”.
“The inescapable conclusion is that multinationals are using structures and exploiting current tax legislation to move offshore profits that are clearly generated from economic activity in the UK.
“HMRC should be challenging this, but its response so far to these big businesses and their aggressive tax planning has lacked determination and looks way too lenient. Policing the tax system must be at the heart of what HMRC does.
An HMRC spokesman said: “We relentlessly challenge those that persist in avoiding tax and have recovered £29bn additional revenues from large businesses in the last six years, including £4.1bn in the last four years from transfer pricing enquiries alone.”
‘Breathtaking hypocrisy’
Continue reading the main story
Analysis
Jonty BloomBusiness correspondent, BBC News
It is worth remembering that corporation tax is not the only tax that companies pay. Corporation tax does raise £50bn in the UK, but other taxes that cannot be avoided so easily include VAT; then there is the business rate, which raises some £25bn a year. The Institute for Economic Affairs says that is enough to pay for the secondary education system and the police and the fire service.
Also, companies pay National Insurance contributions for every worker they hire and fuel duty and vehicle excise duty which are one of the biggest revenue earners for the government.
That doesn’t mean that foreign companies aren’t doing their best to avoid paying corporation tax on the profits they make here, but then UK companies operating in France, China or the US are probably doing much the same there.
Laws on corporate taxation are extremely complex and often part of internationally negotiated treaties, one reason they are difficult to change and why companies have become very good at exploiting every legitimate and legal loophole that they can.
In a statement to coincide with the committee’s report, Amazon said it paid all applicable taxes in every jurisdiction that it operated in: “We have a single European headquarters in Luxembourg with hundreds of employees to manage this complex operation.”
Starbucks said in a statement: “We have listened to feedback from our customers and employees, and understand that to maintain and further build public trust we need to do more.
“As part of this we are looking at our tax approach in the UK. The company has been in discussions with HMRC for some time and is also in talks with the Treasury.”
‘Small fry’
The War on Want charity, which is campaigning for more to be done to tackle tax avoidance, accused the government of “breathtaking hypocrisy”.
It said: “Osborne and Cameron are happy to talk tough on tax. But, in reality, their plans will only go after the small fry on the fringes, while giving a green light to multinationals like Amazon, Google and Starbucks to continue avoiding billions in tax.”
Heather Self, a tax expert, told the BBC assessing tax for major companies was not simple.
“If you buy a book from Amazon you are actually buying from a Luxembourg company,” she said. “It decides how many books to buy and at what price they sell them for. All you have in the UK is a warehouse, a very big warehouse that employs a lot of people but that is all it does. The risk is taken in Luxembourg.
“Profits paid here are for the activities it undertakes here and that is not highly profitable. It is not as simple a situation as the Public Accounts Committee likes to make out sometimes.”
ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) — Gunmen murdered one of the surviving leaders of a peasant movement whose land dispute with a powerful politician prompted the end of Fernando Lugo‘s presidency last June.
Vidal Vega, 48, was hit four times early Saturday by bullets from a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver fired by two unidentified men who sped away on a motorcycle, according to an official report prepared at the police headquarters in the provincial capital of Curuguaty.
A friend, Mario Espinola, told The Associated Press that Vega was shot down when he stepped outside to feed his farm animals.
Vega was among the public faces of a commission of landless peasants from the settlement of Yby Pyta, which means Red Dirt in their native Guarani language.
He had lobbied the government for many years to redistribute some of the ranchland that Colorado Party Sen. Blas Riquelme began occupying in the 1960s.
By last May, the peasants finally lost patience and moved onto the land. A firefight during their eviction on June 15 killed 11 peasants and six police officers, prompting the Colorado Party and other leading parties to vote Lugo out of office for allegedly mismanaging the dispute.
Twelve suspects, nearly all of them peasants from Yby Pyta, have been jailed without formal charges since then on suspicion of murdering the officers, seizing property and resisting authority. The prosecutor had six months to develop the case and will present his findings Dec. 16.
Vega was expected to be a witness at the criminal trial, since he was among the few leaders who weren’t killed in the clash or jailed afterward.
He wasn’t charged because he was away getting supplies when the violence erupted at the settlement erected by the peasants inside Riquelme’s ranch, the Naranjaty Commission’s secretary, Martina Paredes, told the AP.
“We think he was assassinated by hit men who were sent, we don’t know by whom, perhaps to frighten us and frustrate our fight to recover the state lands that were illegally taken by Riquelme,” she said.
Riquelme, who died of natural causes about a month after the battle in June, occupied the land during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, whose government gave away land for free to anyone willing to put it to productive use.
A local court in Curuguaty upheld Riquelme’s claim to the land years later. Lugo’s government later sought to overturn the decision, but the case remains tied up in court.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pressed Republicans to offer a plan to increase revenues and cut government spending, and predicted they would agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest to secure a deal by year-end to avoid the “fiscal cliff.”
In a blitz of appearances on five Sunday morning talk shows, Geithner insisted that tax rates on the richest needed to go up in order to reach a deal, a step Republicans have so far resisted, and he dismissed much of the contentious rhetoric from last week as “political theater.”
“The only thing standing in the way of would be a refusal by Republicans to accept that rates are going to have to go up on the wealthiest Americans. And I don’t really see them doing that,” Geithner, who is leading the Obama administration‘s fiscal cliff negotiations, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The comments mark the latest round of high-stakes gamesmanship focusing on whether to extend the temporary tax cuts that originated under former President George W. Bush beyond their December 31 expiration date for all taxpayers, as Republicans want, or just for those with incomes under $ 250,000, as President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats want.
Republicans, who control the House of Representatives but are the minority in the Senate, have expressed a willingness to raise revenues by taking steps such a limiting tax deductions, but they have largely held the line on increasing rates.
A handful of House Republicans expressed flexibility beyond that of their party leaders about considering an increase in tax rates for the wealthiest, as long as they are accompanied by significant spending cuts.
But most House Republicans refuse to back higher rates, preferring to raise revenue through tax reform.
“There’s not going to be an agreement without rates heading up,” Geithner said bluntly on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The scheduled expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and automatic reductions government spending set to take hold early next year would suck about $ 600 billion out of the economy and could spark a recession. The Obama administration and Congress are engaged in talks to avoid the fiscal cliff with a less-drastic plan to reduce U.S. budget deficits.
WHO SHOULD PAY?
Geithner’s Sunday interviews are part of a broader push to build public support for the Democrats’ position in the negotiations. Obama has made campaign-style appearances, including visiting a Pennsylvania toy factory on Friday where he portrayed Republicans as scrooges at Christmas time.
While breaking no new ground on the Obama administration’s position on Sunday, Geithner repeatedly urged Republicans to provide their own plan.
“They said they’re prepared to raise revenues but haven’t said how, or how much, or who should pay,” Geithner said on NBC.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday, the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, asked Democrats to accept an increase in the Medicare eligibility age, impose higher Medicare premiums for the wealthy, and slow cost-of-living increases for Social Security.
At least one of those suggestions appears to have White House support. On CNN, Geithner said the administration‘s proposal included a modest rise in premiums for higher-income Medicare beneficiaries.
“What we can’t do is sit here trying to figure out what works for them,” Geithner said. “The ball really is with them now.”
The administration has said it is willing to find savings in the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs for the elderly and poor, but Geithner reiterated in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” that it would only be open to looking at changes in the Social Security retirement program outside of the context of a fiscal cliff deal.
(Reporting By Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Eric Beech)
Global coffee chain Starbucks has said it is in talks with HM Revenue and Customs and the Treasury over how much UK tax it pays.
It is one of several well-known firms that were criticised over the level of their corporation tax payments.
The firm admitted that it “needed to do more” in the UK on tax.
Meanwhile, Chancellor George Osborne has pledged more funds for the British authorities to tackle tax avoidance by multinationals.
He told the BBC that an announcement would be made on Monday about the ” extra investment in the part of the Inland Revenue that tackles tax avoidance by multinational companies”.
A Public Accounts Committee report on the topic of how much tax multinational firms pay in the UK is due on Monday.
In November the committee took evidence from executives from Starbucks, Google and Amazon over the amount of tax the companies have paid in the UK.
‘Competitive’
“We have listened to feedback from our customers and employees, and understand that to maintain and further build public trust we need to do more,” said a Starbucks statement.
“As part of this we are looking at our tax approach in the UK. The company has been in discussions with HMRC for some time and is also in talks with The Treasury.”
It said more details would be released later this week.
BBC business correspondent Theo Leggett said the coffee company reported sales of nearly £400m in the UK last year, but paid no corporation tax at all.
“Much of the money it earns in this country is transferred to a sister company in the Netherlands in the form of royalty payments, leaving the UK division to report regular annual losses,” he added.
Mr Osborne did not single out any firms while making his announcement on the Andrew Marr Show.
He also said that as well as his extra funding for the UK authorities, it was also necessary to work at an international level on the issue.
“It is actually Britain who has been working with Germany and France to get those rules on the international table,” he said.
But he also warned against “pricing Britain out of the world economy”, adding that “if we make our taxes less competitive that will just mean more companies stay out of Britain”.
Monday’s PAC report is expected to be critical of the current way in which multinational firms used UK tax legislation.
After last month’s hearings, PAC chair Margaret Hodge MP said: “One of our concerns is that the ability of global companies to choose where to they put their costs and their profits gives them an unfair tax advantage that damages UK-based businesses,”
