Britain ramping up low-tax zones

Government moves to save economy from stagnation

“The investment zones could be areas where the government tests certain policies to get the data. If they work, they could be rolled out nationally.” Kay Swinburne

LONDON: The British government’s £220bil (RM1.09 trillion) blueprint for juicing a stagnant economy includes creating “investment zones” around the nation where companies can take advantage of sweeping tax breaks and pared-down planning regulations.

While releasing details of his mini-budget Friday, Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng said the designated areas will be granted “an unprecedented set of tax incentives for business to invest, to build and to create jobs right across the country.”

The government has identified 24 potential sites, including airports, docks, a gigafactory and an area of Stoke-on-trent dedicated to the ceramics industry.

The playbook is familiar. London’s Canary Wharf, home to some of the world’s biggest banks, has its origins in a budget delivered under Margaret Thatcher.

The transformation of the Isle of Dogs into a financial district pierced by skyscrapers became the most iconic development under the enterprise zones of the 1980s, and that inspired the coalition government of David Cameron and George Osborne to reintroduce the concept in 2011.

“The investment zones could be areas where the government tests certain policies to get the data,” said Kay Swinburne, vicechair of financial services at KPMG UK.

“If they work, they could be rolled out nationally.”

Last year, the government announced plans for “free ports,” a Brexit-inspired idea to stimulate trade and industry through largely tariff-free ports or airports.

Prime Minister Liz Truss promised in her leadership campaign to deliver “full-fat free ports” that surpass those plans.

Investment zones will offer widespread tax relief over 10 years, including a full exemption from business rates – an unpopular levy on properties – and stamp duty land tax, as well as tax-cutting allowances on money that companies spend on machinery and building construction.

Employers also won’t have to pay National Insurance contributions on the salaries of new workers earning as much as £50,270 (US$54,600 or RM249,986) annually.

Business groups broadly welcomed the strategy.

“If it’s well-targeted, it is potentially a useful contribution to levelling up,” said Kitty Ussher, a former Labour MP and Treasury minister who is now chief economist for the Institute of Directors.

The Federation of Small Businesses called it “a welcome innovation, particularly if it channels funding into locations most in need of regeneration.”

Markets were not so impressed, with sterling and gilts tanking in the hours following Kwarteng’s announcement of the sweeping “mini budget” amid fears that deep tax cuts will stoke inflation and leave Britain with a gaping deficit at a time of intense economic hardship.

Critics also accuse low-tax zones of simply displacing business activity and jobs from other areas, and point out that free ports already exist within the European Union.

For supporters of Truss, however, Brexit allows the UK to pursue incentives that wouldn’t be allowed by Brussels.