The big American tech firms known as the “Silicon Six” have been accused of paying almost $278bn (£211bn) less corporate income tax in the past decade compared with the statutory rate for US companies making the same profits.

Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft generated $11tn of revenue and $2.5tn of profits over the past 10 years.

Yet they paid an average 18.8% in combined national and federal corporation taxes, compared with an average 29.7% in the US, according to the Fair Tax Foundation (FTF), which said the Silicon Six had “hardwired” tax avoidance into their business models.

Analysis by the not-for-profit organisation found that if one-off repatriation tax payments in the US connected to historical tax avoidance were excluded, the average corporate income tax contribution of the six firms fell to 16.1% over the past decade.