Budget: Reeves introduces ‘permanently lower’ taxes for retail and hospitality November 26, 2025 Chancellor Rachel Reeves has confirmed she will introduce permanently lower business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure firms, paid for by higher levies on big properties. Retailers have been crying out for business rates reform for years, with concerns that the tax creates an unfair playing field between high street and online firms, which only owe [...]
Budget: Income tax thresholds frozen by Rachel Reeves November 26, 2025 Income tax thresholds will be frozen until the end of the decade, despite the Chancellor previously branding the tax trick as a “stealth tax” tantamount to “pickpocketing”from working people. According to the OBR’s unprecedented leak of Budget contents, the Chancellor chose to freeze the bands at which different rates of income tax are introduced for [...]
BCC boss: Enough taxes. The Budget must tell a positive story November 25, 2025 Last autumn, the British Chambers of Commerce and its members were left shell-shocked when a party that promised to be the most ‘pro-business in history’ used its maiden Budget to deliver a succession of hammer blows to the private sector. Having shouldered the burden last year, boss Shevaun Haviland wants this year’s instalment to paint [...]
There’s nothing new in Zack Polanski’s fantasy economics November 25, 2025 Let’s go for a lyrical opening to this column: “The newspapers shout a new style is growing, but I don’t know if it’s coming or going, there is fashion, there is fad, some is good, some is bad, and the joke – rather sad – that it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.” [...]
Ex-OBR chiefs: Reeves was warned about productivity downgrade November 25, 2025 Chancellor Rachel Reeves was warned about costly productivity downgrades and should have left a bigger fiscal headroom at the Spring Statement, former Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) officials have said. Speaking to City AM, a number of leading economists raised questions around Reeves’ statements suggesting an OBR review of productivity trend forecasts has forced her [...]
Britain’s SMEs are fed up with shouldering tax burden November 24, 2025 The Budget presents tough choices for the Chancellor, but SMEs shouldn’t have to continue shouldering the burden, writes John Phillipou.
UK construction productivity still stuck in the 90s, warns industry body November 21, 2025 Productivity in Britain’s construction sector is now lower than in 1997, according to a new report. Decades of under-investment have left delivery capacity “dangerously thin”, a new report by Oxford Economics for the Construction Plant-hire Association (CPA), Half-Built Britain, has warned. CPA chief Steven Mulholland said the report should serve as a “wake-up call” for [...]
Make the OBR boring again November 21, 2025 The OBR should be independent, trusted and uncontroversial – so it needs a rules-based framework in which to operate, otherwise it will continue to come under attack, says David Aikman The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is preparing to cut its estimate of trend productivity growth. On the face of it, this seems sensible. Productivity [...]
High earners and entrepreneurs to get immigration rule carve-out November 20, 2025 High earners and innovators are set to be handed softer rules on settled status despite an immigration crackdown led by home secretary Shabana Mahmood. Under sweeping reforms to the legal migration system, Mahmood has revealed she is planning on only letting people arriving in the UK from 2021 to gain settled status, formally known as [...]
Reform and Tories battle over the Budget with spending cuts calls November 18, 2025 Opposition parties Reform UK and the Conservatives are intensifying pressure on Labour ahead of the Budget with calls for dramatic spending cuts to fix public finances. In separate press conferences on Tuesday, leaders Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch called for deep cuts to government expenditure to balance the books. Their renewed attacks on the government [...]