Response to autumn statement
Mr Osborne states - let's fix the roof whilst the sun is shining, I could not agree more. He highlighted that the rich pay more taxes now than ever before. I would like to have more incentives for the rich to invest in small businesses through more creative tax credit schemes. Why not increase the SEIS investment amount from 150k to 250k investment cap per business and utilise capital gains tax more.
It's good to know that the government are focused on encouraging investment into higher risk businesses; there are thousands of amazing entrepreneurs with great ideas in the UK. That said I still feel we need to increase our support and I think he could have done more.
I didn't hear anything about encouraging investment into p2p lending other than what was announced in the last budget about including ISA schemes. P2P lending allows the public to bypass banks and lend direct to businesses therefore gaining better rates of return. A lack of representation in this area could be due to pressure from banking institutions, perhaps once the government fully exits from RBS this will change!
I like that the Chancellor has diverted power back from the government to local authorities by allowing them to decide what they charge for business rates – In theory. He stated that the Government have received more income from Business rates than has been paid back so this would result in wealthier Local authorities. However if the Local Authorities reduce business rates this won’t be the case. Also there is the risk of abuse of power, take parking issues for example. Tesco’s don’t charge you to park whilst shopping in their stores; the Local Authorities on the other hand think it’s perfectly acceptable to charge for parking in order to access their local shops.
I think the business rate issue needs more attention, and dare I say it, that a Quango could be formed to make sure this is implemented correctly to encourage growth in towns rather than discourage it.