Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
The Government may extend its proposed 2 per cent online sales tax to all small business – both online and bricks and mortar.
It’s been urged to extend online sales to high street sales that have been made online, such as travel, accommodation and software.
Around £100bn a year is spent with retailers, and the value of all online sales excluding financial services is £700bn, the Treasury said.
This proposal emerged in the interim report on the Business Rates Review, to which the Chancellor is due to respond at the autumn Budget. The report – a summary of business responses – was published on ‘Tax Day’, a new arrangement at which consultations and reviews are released after the Budget.
The Treasury is under more immediate pressure to cut business rates, which raise £30bn a year but have been blamed for harming the high street by penalising physical retailers.
HM Treasury has published a host of consultations and plans to make tax work in the modern day, while trying to recover £31bn every year which is lost to flaws in the current tax system.
>See also: Kevin Hollinrake calls for abolition of business rates
“Respondents stressed that uniform business rates reductions