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Government mulls extending 2% online sales tax to all small businesses

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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

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Hot Business News Today

Government extends business rates relief by £1.5bn to help more Covid-hit firms

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Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
The Government is making an extra £1.5bn in business rates relief available to firms that weren’t eligible before – including offices and wholesalers.
Existing business rates relief  is available to those in retail, leisure and hospitality.
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) welcomed the move. “Many of those businesses such as wholesalers, suppliers and brewers have been hit hard by the pandemic but haven’t been able to access the same levels of support,” said its national chair, Mike Cherry.
However, business rates relief appeals made due to Covid-19 are now banned as well. These appeals were expected to cost up to £5bn, so the Government has saved itself £3.5bn, according to figures from the Rating Surveyors’ Association.
>See also: Business rates appeal talks halted as thousands of firms wait for outcome
The Government said that allowing rates appeals on material change of circumstances could have led to ‘significant amounts of taxpayer support going to businesses who have been able to operate normally throughout the pandemic’. It added this could disproportionately benefit firms in London.
‘It is the wrong thing to do on every level’
Experts describe the move as ‘outrageous’, writing off the hundreds of thousands of business owners who

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