Banks Lobby Against a Budget Levy With Nothing Yet Official
With the Budget four days away, the banking industry has written to the chancellor warning that higher taxes could push business abroad, citing a ranking that puts London’s total tax rate at 46.2% against 29% in Dublin. Unions say the comparison is cherry-picked. Nothing has been published officially.
The omission doing the work in that ranking is Paris, which the industry body says it could not model on a like-for-like basis. One newspaper’s own calculation, reviewed by an accountancy firm, puts a Paris bank at between 51.6% and 57.3%, which would be up to eleven points above London. The Trades Union Congress put it more bluntly: “It’s little surprise that some in the finance lobby are cherrypicking jurisdictions to aid their argument… it tells us nothing about the actual taxes paid by Britain’s big banks.” It estimates that raising the bank surcharge from 3% to 8% would yield £2.25bn a year, and the chief executive of one large bank said on Thursday that a rise would be “bearable”. Separately the chancellor is reported to be planning a £20bn lending boost for two state banks, which would require flexing his fiscal rules, with the extra borrowing starting in 2028. The Treasury will not comment on “rumour, speculation or proposals”, and four days out nothing about the Budget has appeared on the government’s own publication service.