Rishi Sunak has shown his true colours by hiding stealth tax rises in the detail Sam Dumitriu Don’t be fooled, Rishi Sunak is a fiscal conservative first, and a low-tax conservative second. This was a tax-cutting spring statement, but as the Office Budget Responsibility (OBR) pointed out, on balance Sunak has been a tax-hiking Chancellor. In fact, the net cut to personal taxes introduced at the Spring Statement offsets “just over a [...]
Rachel Reeves must ground Labour’s policy in compelling plans for economic growth Sam Dumitriu It is easy to get frustrated following politics. I’m not talking about the in-fighting, the hypocrisy, or the subsequent tendency for allegations of hypocrisy to overshadow any substantive policy issues. My gripe is with the shallowness of the policy debate. Too often, politicians confuse ends with means. The result is a complacent debate and vacuous [...]
Crackdowns on tech mergers will only serve to deter British entrepreneurs Technology What if Facebook had never bought Instagram? This question keeps competition regulators like the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) up at night. In 2012, Instagram had just 30m users, 13 employees, and made no money. The $1bn valuation was mocked and appeared to many to be the sign of a tech bubble ready to burst. [...]
Entrepreneurship can be taught – so why don’t we teach it more? September 22, 2020 It is hard to think of a tougher task than teaching school children remotely. Until this month’s return to the classroom, schools across the country have been forced to adapt these challenging circumstances. Not everything has worked out, but projects such as Oak National Academy thousands of free online lessons show the potential for innovation [...]
A digital tax is no way to reward our innovative online retailers July 28, 2020 Throughout lockdown, the advantages — indeed, the essentiality — of online retail became clear. Now, Rishi Sunak is rumoured to be mulling over a new online sales tax. Advocates for this new tax, such as SportsDirect owner Mike Ashley and Tesco boss Dave Lewis, believe that the existing business rates system creates an uneven playing [...]
Reviving the post-study work visa will help the UK attract international talent September 12, 2019 It is hard to think of a more short-sighted and self-destructive policy than Theresa May’s decision in 2012 to close the post-study work visa route for those wanting to live and work in Britain. Boris Johnson is right to bring it back. Britain’s universities are truly world class, attracting the best and brightest from across [...]
Elitist Britain: how can we make business more meritocratic? July 17, 2019 The UK may have been spared an all-Etonian Tory leadership contest, but Britain is still an undoubtedly elitist country. While just seven per cent of Brits were educated privately, 65 per cent of senior judges, 59 per cent of top civil servants, 39 per cent of cabinet ministers, and 44 per cent of newspaper columnists [...]
DEBATE: Is the Tesco boss right to call for slashed business rates and an online tax to save the high street? May 15, 2019 Is the Tesco boss right to call for slashed business rates and an online tax to save the high street? Robert Palmer, executive director of Tax Justice UK, says YES. Tesco’s Dave Lewis is right: the way we tax high street shops and online firms isn’t working. The tax system benefits companies like Amazon and Google, [...]
DEBATE: Will the EU copyright reform being voted on this week ‘break the internet’? July 4, 2018 Will the EU copyright reform being voted on this week break the internet? Sam Dumitriu, head of projects at the Adam Smith Institute, says YES. The EU’s new Copyright Directive is anti-competition, anti-innovation, and anti- free speech. It requires online platforms to develop complex and expensive filtering systems to monitor and delete copyrighted content. If [...]
Spring Budget 2017: What should chancellor Philip Hammond’s headline promise be tomorrow? March 7, 2017 Sam Dumitriu, head of projects at the Adam Smith Institute, says scrap a tax: Not all taxes are created equal, but almost all deter productive activity. Philip Hammond should look to Lord Lawson’s stint where he abolished at least one tax every Budget and took an axe to top marginal rates. So where should he [...]
