---

Finance Bill

Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 would reduce the small companies rate of corporation tax to 20 per cent. and make the appropriate change to the fraction. At a time when small companies are under pressure, facing higher costs and a more uncertain economy, it is beyond belief that the Government feel that the answer to their problems is to increase the small companies rate of corporation tax. As in the case of the 10p rate, which we will debate later, the author of the tax increase is not the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, but his predecessor—the Prime Minister. As Chancellor during last year's Budget, he announced that he would increase the small companies rate from 19 per cent. to 22 per cent. in three successive Finance Bills. That has sent out a confused and confusing message to the small business community, which has had a decade of instability in respect of the small companies rate of tax. The Committee should remember that the rate is now on an upward curve, having fallen from 24 per cent. in 1996-97 to 19 per cent. in 2002-03. There will have been six changes to the small companies rate of corporation tax between 1996-97 and 2009-10; that is before we take into account the starting rate of 10 per cent., which was introduced in 2000-01 and which the Prime Minister, when Chancellor, reduced to zero in 2002-03. In 2004-05, he overlaid it with a 19 per cent. tax rate on distributions to shareholders. He scrapped it completely in 2006-07. For small businesses seeking to navigate their way around the rate of corporation tax, there has been a significant amount of change. At this time, businesses want stability, predictability and certainty, rather than the only certainty that they have had in the past decade—that the rate will continually change. It is not surprising that the verdict of business organisations and small businesses has been hostile. In its Budget submission for this year, the Federation of Small Businesses pulled no punches. It said that"““The Government's approach to the taxation of small businesses remains alarmingly disjointed and inconsistent. What has been received is a never-ending raft of badly thought through last minute measures, designed to tackle problems in one part of the tax regime, but ending up creating several more elsewhere.””" It goes on to say that"““Small businesses continue to be let down by the Government with regards to taxation and were understandably extremely disappointed by the announcement in Budget 2007 to increase the small firms rate of corporation tax from 19 to 22 per cent. This was a draconian measure to tackle a problem of tax avoidance that did not exist and will have a highly detrimental effect on many small businesses.””" The Forum of Private Business said that politicians should give the same attention to the increase in the lower rate of corporation tax as they gave to the abolition of the 10p rate, and 76 per cent. of respondents to its survey said that"““reversing the decision to increase the small firms rate of corporation tax would encourage them to reinvest in their business, with 49 per cent. indicating that they would have extra funds to invest in skills and training””." The response from individual companies has been equally hostile. Tim Rhodes of Skypark Freight Ltd in Liverpool said of the Government:"““They don't seem to be thinking of tomorrow. Small businesses are quite resilient and tend to bounce back, but all of these additional taxes are very trying. Often, it comes to the point where you ask if it's worth carrying on—we can hold on only for so long, after that, unfortunately, job losses will be the result.””" Matt Hardman, who runs a bacon slicing business in Bury, called the decision to increase the small companies rate a ““kick in the teeth””. There is widespread concern among business communities about the increase in the small companies rate by 1 per cent. to 21 per cent. this year and then 22 per cent. next year. Businesses will be asking themselves why the Government are attacking small companies in this way. What have they done to get to a stage where the small companies rate of tax had fallen to 19 per cent. but is now back on that upper curve? The genesis of the increase stems from the decision in the 2002 Budget to introduce the 0 per cent. rate of corporation tax for profits of less than £10,000. That triggered a wave of incorporations of companies, which some predicted at the time. I believe that the Government's analysis of the situation is this: that a tax change that was meant to stimulate entrepreneurial activity led to that mass incorporation by people seeking to take advantage of the lower 0 per cent. rate of tax, which gave them an advantage comparable to self-employed and employed people earning the same income. The analysis produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies bears out that analysis, which was then, however, used to justify the abolition of the 0 per cent. rate and is now being used to justify the increase in rate from 19 to 22 per cent.—2p higher than the basic rate of tax that people who earn a comparable amount of income would be paying through the income tax system. The Government's introduction of the 0 per cent. rate created a significant incentive for businesses to incorporate. The abolition of the 0 per cent. rate has narrowed the gap between the effective tax rate that small companies enjoy and the effective tax rate that individuals enjoy when they are employed, but there is now a sense that the Government are seeking to go further and further in narrowing that gap. Part of the Government's action is that which is before us today—the increase in the small companies corporation tax rate—but they have also taken other steps to deal with the issue. Last year's Finance Act introduced changes on managed service companies, and the pre-Budget report included proposals on income shifting—again, targeted at incorporated small businesses. Those proposals have been deferred for a year, and business organisations welcome that, but they are concerned that they might return in next year's Finance Bill and are looking to have a proper dialogue with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and the Treasury to tackle those issues. A series of measures is being taken to tackle the gap in the effective rate of tax, but it is not clear to small business organisations just how far the Government intend to go in dealing with the issue. It would be helpful in the context of this debate if the Financial Secretary could clearly set out the basis of Government policy on the taxation of small companies and businesses, because significant concern is building up that the Government are turning their backs on small companies, that they do not show any understanding of how small companies operate, and that that is creating a culture in which entrepreneurial activity is penalised. A significant cost arises from the Government's approach because companies that are already finding it difficult to trade profitably will see their taxable profits decline. The tax bill of any company with profits of less than £300,000 will increase regardless of whether it employs one person, 10 people, 100 people or 1,000 people. That illustrates the crude nature of the Government's step. If this tax increase is motivated by a concern about incorporation, the Government need to recognise that it catches out many businesses, not only one-man bands. That is part of the unfairness that people perceive in the system. They see the tax rate and the tax bill for small companies increase in the Budget, as it did in the last Budget and as it will in the next Budget. The Government argue that the annual investment allowance will compensate for that. However there are two flaws to that approach. First, the allowance is available to all small businesses—that is a much wider pool than all small companies. While the pain is concentrated on one group, the gain is spread more thinly. Last year, I estimated that small companies' average loss would be approximately £1,000, whereas the gain to small businesses would be less than £100. Proper compensation is therefore not being paid to the small companies that will lose out through the increase in the small companies corporation tax rate. Secondly, the compensation rewards a specific type of business activity—investing in physical assets—and does not recognise the other sorts of investment that companies can make, such as in training, human development and so on. The Government are trying to incentivise only one form of behaviour when firms could operate in other ways to improve their businesses, for example, through investing in people by developing skills and so on. They are introducing the annual investment allowance when the Red Book forecasts a fall in growth in business investment from 3.75 per cent. in 2007 to between 1.75 and 2.25 per cent. this year.