Crappy Labour conference proposals

From the BBC: Labour has promised to spend an extra £28bn a year on making the UK economy more “green” if it wins power. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said the money would go on offshore wind farms, planting trees and developing batteries.

Waste of money.

In her speech to Labour’s annual conference in Brighton, she also pledged to phase out business rates to help the Covid-damaged High Street. And she said giant tech firms would pay more tax in future.
By all means cut taxes on businesses and lighten the admin burden for small businesses. Simplify and reduce VAT and NIC. Scrap the ‘making tax digital’ nonsense. Phasing out Business Rates will achieve absolutely nothing in that regard, it’s a straight bung to land owners.

Sure, there are lots of owner-occupier businesses, they have to pay Rates, but they are still at a huge advantage to tenant businesses who have to pay rent and Rates. If they phase out Rates, then rents will just go up to soak up the difference, making the gap even bigger.

As to giant tech firms, is she totally innumerate? £28 bn for green crapola and £30 bn Business Rates lost = £58 bn.

What are the UK profits of Facebook? Maximum one tenth of global profits of $29 bn, call it £4 billion. I can’t be bothered looking up Microsoft and Google and so on. Even if you managed to tax all their UK profits at 100%, that wouldn’t cover a quarter of the extra spending and tax breaks for landowners. In practice, it will barely touch the sides.