Lord Saatchi Calls for SME Corporation Tax to be Dropped
Well-known advertising professional Lord Saatchi has called for corporation tax, along with capital gains tax, to no longer apply to SMEs. This, he claims, would significantly drive growth.
Lord Saatchi produced a report for the Centre for Policy Studies in which he pointed out that a huge 90% of businesses in the UK employ fewer than 50 people. The majority only employ around 5.
Currently, official figures suggest that GDP is expected to rise to the level of 2.4% growth over the course of the next five years. According to Saatchi, exempting the many small businesses in the UK and those who invest in them from corporation tax and capital gains would significantly increase the pace of growth and result in 3.1% being reached within the same timeframe.
In the 2011/2012 financial year, corporation tax raised approximately £43.8 billion. Only a relatively small portion of this, around £8 billion, came from small businesses.