Budget: business rates cut will help sign-makers
The Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond’s budget gives help to printing and sign-making firms by cutting business rates by a third in England with business properties with a rateable value of £51,000 or less.
Tuesday, 30 Oct 2018 11:18 GMT
The Treasury team on Budget Day. Pic Sky News
The paper and pulp industries will also be pleased with his promises to increase tax and regulation for plastic packaging, upping the percentage of recycled plastic required in new plastics. This will inevitably increase costs for the plastic packaging industry with buyers looking at alternatives such as paper, card, organic, recyclable or compostable substrates.
Housing gets an injection of £600m which is good news for the printing, sign and allied industries as is investment in schools and the NHS. Another big one is the no increase to fuel duty which will help all businesses and inflation in general.
Another boost to the economy in general is the rise in the level of the personal allowance threshold for when people start paying income tax. It rises to £12,500 in April, meaning millions of people will have £650 extra a year to spend potentially pumping more cash into the economy while the threshold rate of tax for the higher paid rises up to £50,000, giving those people more than £3,000 extra a year. The National Living Wage rate paid by many employers rises to £8.21 from April, representing a modest but welcome rise for those workers.
It is not enough to save the high street, but it is a step in the right direction in the view of shop keepers and shop fitters and of course sign-makers”
The Chancellor also announced a UK Digital Services Tax, which he says is not an online sales tax on goods bought online and will only be paid by profitable firms like Amazon that have at least £500m a year in global revenues. It is not enough to save the high street, but it is a step in the right direction in the view of shop keepers and shop fitters and of course sign-makers. Fewer shops and fewer shoppers in the high street is bad news for the sign industry so anything to stem the decline is good.
There are some notes of caution. Firstly, the small print needs to be gone through in the next couple of days to discover any ifs and buts. Will the cash promised, be new money or money already promised or not available until after the next election? The leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn replied the budget did not mean the end of austerity. He said some sections of industry such as the motor industry were in recession.
Critics have rounded on the prudent and cautious image the chancellor had previously given himself saying the Government’s deficit will actually rise due to the spending nature of the budget. Many have seen it as a budget to cheer Tory MPs ahead a potential election next year and as a sweetener to the electorate.
And finally, the chancellor himself said the budget may need to be revised in the case of the no-deal Brexit, which still casts a shadow over Westminster and business in general.
What do you think? Email your thoughts to harry@linkpublishing.co.uk or call me on Tel: 0117 9805 040 – or follow me on Twitter and join in the debate.
