There aren’t many people who can say that Gordon Brown has cut their taxes. In fact, as far as I’m aware there are just managers of private equity funds — and me.
The Chancellor’s introduction of the flat-rate VAT scheme in 2002 was so uncharacteristic that it took me a whole year to work out that I could simplify my VAT returns and save several thousand pounds a year. Sadly that simple reform, which allows small businesses to reclaim VAT as a fixed percentage of turnover rather than on each item — and rewards cheapskates like me who run up very low expenses — was to be a one-off.
Otherwise, for small businesses the Blair years have been about just three things: regulation, regulation, regulation. To have been a small businessman in 1997 must have been rather like being a strapping youth in 1914: the wrong time to be alive.
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