I think it’s possibly a little too simplistic to blame just business rates - but as part of a bigger picture it all comes together and you can see why so many businesses are on there arses.
You’ve got public sector numpties who couldn’t run a bath, dictating to enterprising business owners that you will pay our insane rates to cover our reckless spending, or we’ll see you in court.
In the last 12 months, the business rates for my business have gone up by 2.5x. The area we’re in has become subject to a “BID” (business improvement district), we weren’t in our unit when it was voted on and we are now being hit with a demand for an additional £300/year (didn’t even know about it until we had moved in).
We now have to pay increased contributions towards all employee pensions - which is another mid four figures a year for us. Then obviously we have to pay employer NI too. I mean you should absolutely be taxed for having the audacity to offer people jobs, right?
Anyway my point is, all of those things add up to quite a large amount. Where’s all this money coming from to cover additional taxes and rates? There’s a lot of uncertainty around, we definitely can’t put our prices up. But we’re paying more than we have in the past for stock due to the weak pound. Sellers from China can post products from Shanghai to the UK cheaper than we can post the same products from Manchester to London, for example.
All the while our politicians and local councils continue troughing while businesses find it harder and harder to pay the bills let alone make a profit.
Then, when someone like Mike Ashley does find an angle and a way of making a profit on the high street, let’s rip the piss out of him in the media for being a fat chav. Because that’s how we roll in this country.
Plenty of cheaper alternatives to Amazon already if you're in no rush.The high street was murdered by large chain stores and they in turn are being killed off by internet shopping giants, as for tax maybe the laws we have are outdated and the only solution would be a global one considering we now live in a globally constructed marketplace. In 30 years time people will be discussing the death of Amazon and Ebay nostalgic for it's buying format.
Agree with all the above as I have a number of retail outlets, plus try to take any money out of the business yourself and you get hammered for tax again.
With the amount of retailers having problems, it’s not surprising that Intu and ooh some other company that has many shopping malls in the US, are feeling the pinch with empty shops and no tenants... maybe having to sell the cash cow to Saudi isn’t such a pie in the sky rumour, if they need to raise cash.
Oh yes - corp tax on profits. Then when you take some profit home for a job well done, they want a bit more through dividend tax.
The one that really, really gets my goat is VAT. Everyone peddles the myth that the consumer pays for it. I can cite real data from real businesses that have gone VAT regd and all of them had to absorb most of the VAT they charge as they couldn’t put prices up. I can’t cite data from my own as we started out VAT regd but what I do know is there’s a tonne of smaller competitors who can charge 15-20% less than we do, as they aren’t charging VAT.
I go to the US a lot and obviously everything over there is advertised excluding tax, which gets added on at the till. Imagine they did that over here? And the proletariat realised that nearly £10 of that £50 shopping bill in Asda is tax, on top of the deductions already taken from their pay slip, the car tax they pay, fuel duty they pay, council tax they pay, stamp duty to buy a house and so on. If we had prices advertised ex-VAT like they do in the US there’d be a peasants’ revolt in less than a week. Obviously I’ve contradicted myself a bit here, but either way some poor cxnt is paying VAT whether it’s businesses absorbing it or consumers.
Oh and finally, the one that really, really, really gets my goat is when cxnts like Hammond go on about how pensions tax relief is “eye-wateringly expensive”. How can money they never had be an expense? Basically, the government eye up 100% of your income and anything they let you keep is a bonus. You might be thinking well with a top rate of tax at 45% plus NI, that’s not too bad. But don’t forget they need you to have a bit of cash so you can pay VAT on everything you buy, council tax, stamp duty and so on. They can’t tax you 100% at income source (as much as they would if they could). They’ve got to let you have a bit, and if you’re particularly enterprising with the little you do get to take home, they’ll come and grab some of that off you too.
I sometimes sit round scratching my head wondering how there hasn’t been a revolution in this country. Even better, we continue to vote these wankers in time and again to continue taking the piss out of us!
I often think back to Northern Rock and how it caused the government a massive headache when there was a run on the bank. It’d be a piece of cake to bring “the system” to its knees. Everyone get a grand overdraft and take all your cash out - coordinate via social media, and all of a sudden the clowns in Westminster have a very real problem. The run on Northern Rock was almost catastrophic, I’d be interested to see what would happen in a mass run on mainstream banks today. I’d offer to organise such an event but I’m too busy working 18 hour days to pay tax to cover the government and local authorities’ reckless debt.
Rant over, goodnight and god bless.
PS. I’m currently looking at emigrating to Massachusetts or New Hampshire, so I’m not ranting in vain, I’m doing something about it!
Love your post, but the bit I highlighted isn’t quite accurate. If you earn over 100k, They also reduce your tax free allowance by a quid for every two quid over it you earn.....i read a report on this a couple of years ago that claimed if you earned between 100 to 160k salary you were paying around 60% net tax.
You’d be paying about 40% net on that salary range, assuming you weren’t paying into a pension. You could bring that down to about 33% with a decent pension contribution.Love your post, but the bit I highlighted isn’t quite accurate. If you earn over 100k, They also reduce your tax free allowance by a quid for every two quid over it you earn.....i read a report on this a couple of years ago that claimed if you earned between 100 to 160k salary you were paying around 60% net tax.