back to article Chancellor's cuts should spare small biz

Ending tax relief for small business will send thousands of small companies into administration, the Chancellor is warned today. The Time to Pay scheme was introduced to help offset the impact of the credit crunch in late 2008. It allows small firms to defer tax payments and has already been used by 200,000 firms which have …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Great, £5bn out of the budget

    So if I were to say that I was a small business owner, I could get away with paying less tax!

    And when the time comes to pay, like most capitalists, I get the receivers in and get away without paying a penny.

    Well done!

  2. Graham Marsden
    FAIL

    @Obviously!

    Obviously you don't know what a small business actually *is* and don't realise that things like this are actually *checked*.

    You also obviously don't comprehend that this is not "paying less tax" it simply allows SMEs who are having difficulties with cashflow to pay off their taxes in installments instead of having to fork out a big lump sum that would leave them unable to pay wages or buy the stock and materials they need to keep operating.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @obviously

    Putting aside that you've misunderstood the story:

    big businesses start off as small businesses. They don't need Gov't help, they just need fewer constraints.

    I employ 3 people, we just about break-even (but I can't afford to pay myself as much as I pay any of my employees). If we can survive the bad times then when things improve we stand a reasonable chance of growth but for now, things are difficult.

    Were one of us to get pregnant or even seriously ill we'd have to close down. That's 4 of us unemployed. Current tax generation from us (Income tax, NI, VAT) is "only" about £15k a year (but that's more than any one of us earn). A big business can afford sick pay, maternity pay etc. For us just the absence of the skilled individual would wipe us out. Fine you say, the reality is that your business isn't viable - that's true but it could be. You choose, do you want 4 of us to cease to be in employment, generating tax revenue, providing a useful service to other local businesses at a competitive price. Or would you prefer us to become unemployed, a burden on the state, reducing our individual spending power in the local economy. In addition our customers, mostly other struggling small businesses would have to pay higher prices for an (essential) service like ours so contributing to putting their survival at risk too.

    If we paid NO tax there's little question that we' would survive and 4 people would remain in employment - but it seems you'd prefer that we were living on state benefits.

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