Today the Conservative Party announced that it would cut business rates for shops, cinemas and pubs. The proposal sounds great, but the moment you look at the detail, you groan. There’s a percentage cut… to a discount… that applies to a subset – yawn. Has someone brought George Osborne back?
Recent polling shows that the Conservatives have become the party of the working class and they have always been the party of small business. In the remaining weeks of the election campaign, the Conservatives should be looking to make policy announcements that bind in the loyalty of these groups. Why are they tinkering when they could do something radical with a transformative impact?
Earlier this year, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) suggested such a thing. In a report, they suggested that small businesses should pay a single tax on a straight percentage of turnover.
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