YOU HAVE YOUR SAY
EVERY week, Money Mail receives hundreds of your letters and emails about our stories. Here are some from last week’s report about how huge tax hikes are threatening the future of thousands of small businesses . . .
TAX RAID THAT COULD WIPE OUT YOUR LOCAL SHOPS
THE solution is simple: get rid of business rates and replace them with a 1 pc tax on all sales that are collected with the VAT return.
That way, you don’t have to worry about valuations or appeals any more, and you also bring business sales into the tax net. M. H., Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.
I DON’T believe high business rates are the reason the High Street is failing. It’s declining because, quite simply, it’s had its day in the face of stiff competition from the internet. It doesn’t matter how many tax breaks you give it. M. D., Manchester.
WHY doesn’t the Government make sure it taxes the big corporations appropriately instead?
For many towns, the disappearance of local shops means the loss of the entire community.
A street filled with big, corporate coffee shops and national chains does not a community make. G. R., London.
THE High Street started to die years ago. Take Exeter, where I’m from: there are now just a handful of small, local businesses, when the streets used to be filled with them.
It won’t be long before the entire city centre is controlled by big corporations. It stinks. S. B., Exeter, Devon.
THE corporatisation of the High Street is destroying communities. A large supermarket paid our council £1 million to build over local cricket and football pitches. We weren’t consulted at all. They were for the people of our village and yet, in an instant, they were handed over to someone else because of money. A. A., Manchester.
I’M CURIOUS to find out how many of the people complaining about the disappearance of local shops actually use them.
Most of us are guilty of shopping online, where things are cheaper and we don’t have to battle to park. But if we want High Streets to survive, we must use them. K. B., Cambridge.
MOST businesses will pass some, or all, of the tax increase onto customers. It’s like the local pub — when the cost of beer goes up, it’s the punters who pay. Ultimately, it won’t be small businesses who are hurt by tax hikes, but you and me. S. B., Westbourne, W. Sussex.