Understandably, businesses and investors across the UK and those with operations here that are internationally headquartered are deeply concerned by the assorted ‘leaks’ about the likely content of next week’s budget announcement.
With mooted: corporation tax increases, rises in employers’ national insurance contributions, the new ‘workers rights’, a lack of clarity around proposed reform of business rates, a new tax on retailers trading online, an end to the cap on fuel tax. The list of potentially damaging actions the Government is empowered to inflict is no laughing matter. Some formed part of its manifesto, others like removing the £300 a year winter fuel allowance from pensioners certainly did not, and would have produced a very different election result.
It seems that anyone who has, quite literally, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and created a business, no matter how small, and who employs staff including themselves, is fair game for a pounding.
Ditto those who have pursued a profession, or worked their way up the ladder, are expected to be targeted with higher taxes whilst also being priced out of funding their children’s education in the public school sector thanks to using VAT to increase the costs to parents. Given that the widely suggested annual salary of £100k appears to be the tipping point for most ‘reform’, this will very obviously include a large number of professionals, eg: hospital consultants, senior civil servants, lawyers, engineers, heads of educational establishments, etc., as well as successful people in business management & development roles in commercial enterprises. Some form of ‘punishment’ is also on the cards for anyone who has, or is in the process of building up, a significant pension pot, ie: hospital consultants, senior civil servants, and lawyers … Might that also include government ministers and MPs or will they be excluded?
Taxes are, of course, levied on pension income. Perhaps it is also time to bring absolutely all income including benefits into consideration for tax purposes, to level the playing field for those who work hard to support their families. The unfairness is a major bugbear for all those at the lower end of the pay scale. It would also surely be simpler to pay all pensioners the winter fuel allowance and make it taxable, those on the lowest incomes would pay no tax on it, others would.
We can hope that those finetuning this budget will consider how difficult it is for businesses to continue with their ongoing plans for growth, to create more jobs, to break into more markets when they are penalised at every turn with increased bureaucracy, interference with their business’ terms of employment, and other knee-jerk policies like purportedly removing the cap on fuel tax. The latter will open the floodgates to rampant inflation as every road mile in the supply chain for every product and service we use becomes ever more expensive.
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