It’s curious, this idea of waiting for a budget. For many, it is an exercise with little anxiety – A check to see if the wine works again and if you can still fill the tank. But for business owners in London right now, waiting for Rachel Reeves’ budget share on November 26 feels less like counting the feeling and counting down the death knell.
Charlie Gilkes, who is setting up some barriers to start and move on to another part of London – Bunga Bunga, the kind of place where the revival is, “it feels like he’ll let you know if he’ll let you know he’ll be able to get killed.”
And you can see his point. The Reeves budget, redeployed, delayed, and threatened with greater secrecy than the Bond Villa plan, has arrived under the kind of cloud that usually pays – and it will be London.
For weeks now, rumors have been circulating through the streets of Westminster like wasps around the Picnic: HASH tax here, business prices”.
The problem is not that the government wants to increase the money – everyone knows the state money that looks like an excess of students in one week. The problem is who will come down to do it. Because when politicians say “We all have to contribute,” what they usually mean is “London can pay.”
Let’s put this. London generates £618 billion a year in GDP – about 22 percent of the UK Total. Enter South East, and you’re close to half. The capital and its surrounding areas contribute 30 percent of all income taxes and more than 30 percent of business values. It’s the Engine Room of the UK economy, the little thing that keeps the lights on while politicians from across the party take turns kicking each other in the shins.
And yet, Reeves’ group seems ready to push for changes that will hit big business. A “Super Multiplier” for properties with assessed values above £500,000 – a neat way of saying “We’ll charge your London office tax more because it looks 58p per pound higher.
To call that punishment would be an understatement. It’s an electric shock for all businesses in the W1 zip code. It doesn’t matter that these companies have already raided the statistics of the eyes of the eyes of the eyes of hiring, of the workers and services – the Treasury still wants a piece of it, maybe before its opening.
David Jones of Avison Young pointed out an obvious but important fact: Business values are headed in the right direction. They are not for profit; they came out. You pay them whether you make money or not. The equivalent of the funds considered to chip in your new submissions to make the provider.
And then there is the wealth tax chief. The Reeves’ group is said to be looking to remove capital gains from homes worth more than $1.5 million. That might sound a bit ambitious, but in London it’s not a house – it’s a family home with a kitchen extension and a decent postcode. Around 11 per cent of London Properties sit above this threshold, compared to 2 per cent elsewhere.
James Evans of Douglas & Gordon hit the nail on the head: “For many neighbours, £1.5 million is a long way from home.” Of course. It’s a three-bed terrace in Clapham with a paint scheme and floodlight. If that’s “wealth,” then Britain’s definition of luxury needs some serious realism.
Add to that the possibility of 1 percent of the annual levy levy on homes over $ 2 million, and you get a policy cocktail that would make even Mr. Fogg Wince. These taxes only; Prevent – Neon signs flash “London: Closed for business” to anyone thinking of investing, moving, or staying put.
And let’s not forget the white collar crowd. Reeves is reported to be a change towards the eye of spending tax money, which can hit law firms and solarc plexus consulting. Partners who get seven figures may not be your first vote, but when they go – and they will go, because Dubai, because Dubai, the new result will hit everything from the sandwich shop to Spin Studios.
Charlie Gilkes doesn’t just speak for himself. He talks about a city that has gone through hell in the last few years – from Lockdowns that have brought hospitality to difficult areas, inflation, mountain rents and endless politics. What London needs is resilience, speculation, the idea that the rules won’t be rewritten every six months. What you get instead is a fortune that seems to view its success as a problem to be solved.
It is a funny kind of masochism that defines our politics: punish the productive, milk the metropolitan, and work when the rest of the country begins to dry up.
London doesn’t want special treatment. It just wants to be noticed that when you sink the capital, the whole of Britain feels the pressure. Trains built in Derby, textiles woven in Huddersfield, Wine poured in SoHo – they are all part of the same chain. Cut to the top, and the bottom falls.
So, as Reves sharpens his red pen and business owners plan to count down the days until the 26th, it feels like he’s waiting on death row. But maybe, just maybe, the border will look up at the idea, take a deep breath, and decide that execution is not the growth strategy Britain needs right now.
Until then, we wait – tied up, tied up, praying for last-minute revenge.
