UK's Labour to increase taxes on online retailers to help high street retailers
September 27, 2021, 5:29 am

UK's Labour to increase taxes on online retailers to help high street retailers

Economy-money

The News Groove reported according to Reuters, Britain’s opposition Labour Party would impose higher taxes on online retailers to fund tax relief for bricks and mortar businesses, the party’s would-be finance minister Rachel Reeves will say on Monday, an advance copy of her speech shows.

According to the report, Britain is not due to head to the polls until 2024 at the latest, but the opposition Labour Party is using its annual conference to present plans it hopes will win back traditional voters lost to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen the centre-right government spend hundreds of billions of pounds to prop up the economy, racking up debts that may take generations to pay off.

But polls show the crisis has made higher public spending more acceptable to voters, giving the left-leaning Labour Party a political opportunity to present itself as fiscally responsible without having to resort to spending cuts.

Reeves’ keynote address at the party conference in Brighton, southern England, will contain proposals for a freeze on the property-linked taxes that traditional businesses pay, funded by a temporary rise in a digital services tax aimed at online giants.

If in power, Labour said the digital services tax should rise to 12% from 2% in 2022/23 before being replaced by a global system of minimum taxes, which has already been agreed internationally.

The government has repeatedly set out its own plans to reform business rates, which are calculated based on the value of properties and seen as unfairly targetting retail and hospitality firms with high-value real estate.

Labour said it would go further by eventually abolishing the system and replacing it with a fairer scheme.

Reeves has also outlined a new set of fiscal rules and said that the wealthy – including landlords and shareholders – should bear more of the burden of paying for government spending.

Source: newsgroove

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Upon arriving to participate in the summit of the European Political Community, which includes around forty heads of state in Budapest, he said, "I look forward to sitting with the elected U.S. president and seeing how we will collectively ensure we meet challenges, including the threats from Russia and North Korea." He also noted that the strengthening of ties between Russia and North Korea poses a threat to the United States as well, according to reports from Agence France-Presse.

Before Trump's victory, Rutte expressed confidence that a united Washington would remain part of the defensive alliance, even if Trump became the 47th president of the United States. In an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF last Monday night, he stated that both Republicans and Democrats understand that NATO serves not only the security of Europe but also that of America. He added that both candidates are aware that the security of the United States is closely tied to NATO.

On Wednesday, NATO congratulated Trump on his victory but did not address the Ukrainian issue.

It is noteworthy that the relationship between the elected U.S. president and the defense alliance was not the best during his first term in the White House. Trump criticized NATO member states multiple times and even hinted at withdrawing from the alliance unless they increased their financial contributions.

Additionally, the issue of the Russian-Ukrainian war is one of the matters that complicate relations between the two sides, especially since Trump has repeatedly stated that he can end this ongoing conflict, which began in 2022, quickly. He implied that he had a peace plan between Kyiv and Moscow, while his vice president, JD Vance, revealed aspects of that plan, which stipulated Ukraine's commitment not to join NATO, thereby sending reassuring signals to the Russians.

Furthermore, many NATO member states in Europe fear that Trump might halt military aid to Ukraine after he previously criticized the U.S. for pouring funds into supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.