Top retailers plead for rate cut
LEADING retailers are urging Rishi Sunak to slash business rates to help stores and supermarkets compete with online shopping giants.
Chief executives from chains including Tesco, Asda, Morrison, Waterstones and B&Q signed a joint letter to the Chancellor.
They called for a permanent rate reduction once the current holiday from the levy – triggered by the Covid-19 emergency – ends.
Their plea followed confirmation from Treasury sources that Mr Sunak is planning a tax raid on Amazon and other online firms that have made huge profits during the pandemic.
A source close to the Chancellor said Mr Sunak recognised the “need to level the playing field between online and the high street”, although the measures will not be ready to be included in his Budget next month.
In the letter to Mr Sunak, chief executives of 18 retail and retail property organisations representing over a million employees and tens of thousands of shops in the UK warned that failure to cut business rates will hamper the recovery and could put thousands of jobs at risk.
The letter said: “Not all shops have been able to remain open during the pandemic, many have seen a sharp drop in footfall, accelerating existing trends in the sector. “Data from the Centre for Retail Research has shown that these trends, taken together, have led to tens of thousands of job losses and many retail closures in the past 12 months.
“They estimate that nearly 15,000 jobs have been lost already this year and that there will be many more to come.” It added: “Reducing business rates for retailers and rebalancing the tax system to ensure online retailers pay a fair share of tax would be revenue neutral, provide a vital boost to bricks and mortar retailers and support communities in need of levelling up.”
James Daunt, chief executive of the Waterstones book store chain, said: “Business rates on shops are a perverse tax, perversely applied. It is starkly evident that they result in the loss of jobs and the degradation of communities most in need of support.
“They are indefensible in their present form, with the immediate consequence of failure to reform the certain loss of tens of thousands of valuable jobs.”
Vivienne King, of the Shopkeepers’ Campaign, said: “The advantage that online sales has had over the high street for many years has now been exposed, and reform of the business rates system is desperately needed.”