U.K. Finance Industry Renews Plea for Elimination of Bank Tax
U.K. Finance Industry Renews Plea for Elimination of Bank Tax
The City of London is appealing to Boris Johnson’s government to end taxes that target banks, saying the industry needs the competitive boost after Brexit.
“The U.K. tax regime targets specific sectors like U.K.-based banking in a differentiated way, which may jeopardize future investment in this sector and thereby risks adversely impacting the broader ecosystem in which related businesses operate,” Miles Celic, chief executive officer of TheCityUK, the finance industry lobby, wrote in a letter dated Feb. 7 and slated for publication on Thursday.
The banking sector contributed about 40 billion pounds ($52 billion) in tax in 2018, according to a PwC analysis published last year. More than half of that tax is from surcharges and levies on banks specifically as well as from VAT tax.
The bank levy, which was introduced in 2011 after the financial crisis, was expected to have raised 2.3 billion pounds in 2019-2020, according to an estimate by the Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent fiscal watchdog.
TheCityUK also asked the government to increase investment in broadband and telecommunications technologies, especially outside cities, as well as upgrade rail and airport infrastructure.
Johnson’s Conservative government will publish its budget on March 11.
To contact the reporter on this story: Silla Brush in London at sbrush@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, James Hertling
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