Corporate Responsibility
PricewaterhouseCoopers' leadership role brings with it a fourfold responsibility:
- Auditors have an important part to play in the functioning of the capital market; tax and legal advisors operate at the interface between business and society; tax and legal advisors assist organisations with their processes of transformation in an increasingly globalised business environment. An awareness of responsibility is at the heart of all we do as a company in providing advisory or auditing services at these important interfaces between business and public life. Every day, every hour, and at every moment, our advisors and auditors need to act in full awareness of their own responsibility.
- We are leading advisors on Corporate Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship, Compliance and sustainability issues – in short, on every aspect of sustainable business activity. Our task is to put our expertise and experience to work effectively in organisations that seek our help in meeting their responsibilities.
- A key element of corporate social responsibility lies in providing funds for public and social services in countries in which they are active. Corporations do this by paying taxes due under law and paying their contributions to social insurance plans. The concept of Total Tax Contribution has been used to calculate and represent the total amount of taxes paid. In the financial year 2008/09, PricewaterhouseCoopers' Total Tax Contribution in Switzerland amounted to CHF 104 million. Of this, CHF 30 million in taxes and social insurance contributions was charged to our income. A further CHF 74 million was raised from third parties and transferred to the state. This was primarily in the form of employees' social insurance contributions and VAT on income. However, this Total Tax Contribution does not contain taxes paid by our 2,709 employees and partners.
- As one of the top 200 companies in Switzerland, we not only see ourselves as part of Swiss society and the Swiss business world, but also of a variety of communities of greater or lesser size. We are committed to these through our involvement in cultural, sporting, social, economic or environmental projects and initiatives – sometimes with a smaller or greater trade-off, sometimes in ways that can be labelled as sponsoring, Corporate Responsibility or philanthropy. In all these things there is a particular commitment on the part of PricewaterhouseCoopers to something it has chosen deliberately, to which it gives targeted support, and about which it cares passionately.
That is what we aspire to do; we call it "Responsible Leadership".
