Broadcast earlier today, this year’s annual budget announcement brings about as many concerns as it does reasons to be cheerful. One of the most frightening facts revealed concerned unemployment; the one place the word growth isn’t welcome around. Expected to continue to increasing throughout the year, it was very disappointing to hear, especially since January alone, unemployment has risen by 28,000, taking the national total to 2.67 million. The chancellor tried to mask the facts impact by announcing his own silver lining (”It will peak at [a mere] 8.7%”), but this will do little to reassure those out of work. A huge shame, I’m sure you’ll all agree.
All doom and gloom I thought. Until I heard about the tax credits for video game, animation and TV production companies that is. Personally, seeing so many creative tech companies based overseas drives me mad. I’ve long said that if we want to keep up and compete on a truly global level, then the UK has to incentivise businesses such as these to stay in the UK. These industries make up a large percentage of GDP and I honestly believe they will continue to make up more and more in the future.
Addressing his audience, Chancellor George Osborne said that the impact of the sovereign debt crisis has been “significant”, but unusually the economy has “carried a little more momentum into the new year than previously anticipated”. Going on further, he announced two other interesting facts: Borrowing this year is to come in at £126bn, down from November forecast of £127bn. And also, “In total, borrowing is £11bn less than I forecast in the autumn and this will be used to pay down debt”. Two ticks in the positives box there.
But then it got even better. “Funding for faster broadband in UK’s 10 largest cities”, I heard. This sounded good to me, especially on hearing that London in particular will receive up to £25M to install faster internet connections for 750,000 Londoners and more than 120,000 businesses. This, alongside the £15M boost for cycling safety in the Capital made me think things were looking up.
And I was right. The next thing to be said was that the government is investigating the idea of enterprise loans for young people to start their own businesses, along the lines of university loans. Something that I have longed championed. Finally!
….But then came the rather unnecessary; a declaration that everyone in the country will receive a personal tax statement which will explain exactly how your taxation is spent. Conservative MP Ben Gummer, who has championed the idea of personal statements, said: “Few of us would part with more than a few pence without a record of how it was spent. From supermarket receipts to electricity bills, we expect an itemised breakdown of where our money goes. Just as we are under an obligation to pay tax, the Government should be obliged to tell us how it spends our money. It is a simple idea that could change the way we do politics. For the first time people will get a real feel for the relative distribution of their taxes?” ….Only, once it’s gone it’s gone, isn’t it?
This is how your proposed personal tax statement might look: unnecessary
I for one wouldn’t be prepared to pay more tax under the provision I knew it was going to help build a new lamp post or signs on a particular road. The idea to me just seems like a further waste of time and money. However, that said, I’d be very interested to know what you all think – not just of personal statements – but of the budget in general.
Businessmen/women, entrepreneurs, casual readers, please leave your thoughts below about how the budget will affect you.
Entrepreneurs recognised for achievements
Last week saw me attend the 2012 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of The Year Awards, London and South East finals. I was up for London and South Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 along with Cambian Group, Eco2, Harrison Catering Services and Shiply.com. Unfortunately I didn’t win this round, but a worthy winner, Ratheesan Yoganathan of Lebara, went on to be placed into the national awards.
Entrepreneur’s getting ahead in business.
Lebara was a worthy winner of the telecoms section of the awards with one billion users, £750 million revenue and highly profitable. They have given 50% of the shares of their company to other companies with good causes and they currently feed 16,000 underprivileged people around the world everyday. Pretty remarkable!
It is great to see entrepreneurs being recognised for the great contribution they are making to the private sector. I definitely saw a huge amount of success in the room, and to see so many businesses doing well and striving over the past year is really encouraging.
The awards are in their 26th year and they recognise entrepreneurs across the globe. The regional finals were recognising those businesses in the area that have tried to grow a global brand, such as Powwownow. A few stats which I found really interesting were that the regional finalist entrepreneurs had generated more than 63,000 jobs, had grown businesses by 20% since last year and had combined revenues of £18 billion, in spite of tough economic times, which is great to see.
In my opinion there definitely needs to be a shift in the way entrepreneurism is funded and supported in the UK. These awards recognise that there are some great businesses out there that are doing well, but equally there are many that aren’t succeeding as a result of lack of investment, funding and support to start-ups to help during that hard first year.
We absolutely need to encourage more entrepreneurialism in the UK if we ever want to stand a chance at competing with the likes of America in terms of intuitive start-ups. We are slowly getting there and schemes such as the National Loan Guarantee Scheme (NLGS), but if anything the awards only highlighted that if this is the success that we can have without the additional funding and support that is needed – image what we could achieve if we had it?