AaronPascoe

Hotel & Restaurant Owner. MBA. Occasional powerlifter. Unapologetic fan of fluffy white dogs - Maltese. Ex-Biochem. Dad.

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@leonburton @AllisonCGardner Haha - is she your MP?

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@TomPMarshall @DanNeidle @LilMsSocialist Sadly, it's not only on social media. I read too many 'academic' articles based upon ideologically driven evidence-based research. Cherry picking! Too few people want to understand - they just want to be right.

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@DanNeidle @LilMsSocialist Dan, most people don't give a shit about rational numbers; it's all emotional for them, and maybe ideological. Re-read 'Thinking fast & slow' - most people live in their fast brain. And you are challenging it...

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@Word2013screen @vardtaken @safewordsorg https://t.co/vem3AbQTsm = Evidence

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@safewordsorg @Jenkins675 Please join the Free Speech Union. They will provide free legal representation once you are a member.
https://t.co/EGwF2CrTpZ

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@safewordsorg Evil prevails when good people do nothing.

[Allen Simpson @allen_m_simpson]

This is a thoughtful and considered contribution, and I wanted to respond with why I agree with almost everything Dan says but arrive at a different conclusion - that the government should cut VAT for the sector.
👇

The simple version is that the government consistently tell us that unwinding the complexity of wider taxes leaving hospitality overtaxed is too complex. VAT is a Gordian solution.

*Unequal burden* - pre the first Reeves budget, it was estimated that the hospitality paid 66% of pre-tax profits in tax. Finance more like 32%. That inequality has grown materially since, in the ways Dan sets out. The issue isn’t how to pay for a hospitality tax cut, but why hospitality should be expected to pay more in the first place. I therefore dispute the framing of opposition to hospitality asking for help (Dan’s piece is of course far more nuanced and considered).

*Cost shock* - Dan kindly validates our estimation of the cost shock of Reeves budgets, and compares the VAT proposal against it. But that only extended the existing inequality. As above, the underlying situation was already unequal. The VAT proposal doesn’t just aim to redress the harm of the past two years, but to secure a wider rebalancing of the burden.

*Complexity* - business rates is a good example of this. The government couldn’t adjust business rates seriously in a way that would have delivered the manifesto commitment, because of the impact on US tech firms who underpay and the risk of retaliatory tarrifs. The tax code has evolved in a way that places a disproportionate burden on place-based businesses (about to get worse with the Holiday Tax), and the grown not build element of that creates policy complexity. VAT is an imperfect but operationalisable solution.

*Sector not size*. Dan rightly says that large businesses will benefit too. To me, that is not a weakness in our argument. Dan says that 45% of hospitality firms pay no VAT - that’s literally true, but not particularly meaningful. That 45% includes significant numbers of lifestyle and essentially dormant businesses. By definition [almost] anyone business with premises will pay VAT. Another metric using Dan’s footnotes to build the data is that something like 92% of jobs in the sector are with VAT registered firms, so really we’re looking at a support for the vast majority of jobs. Equally, unVATable businesses already receive generous support, so it’s not unreasonable to look elsewhere for where fairness is needed. The issue is that it’s the hospitality business model at all sizes which is suffering. It’s not SME vs Large. You’d rather be an SME fintech than a large restaurant chain from a tax perspective. Or indeed a large fintech than a small hospitality firm. One large holiday business has removed a million hours as a result this year. This is a sector problem and needs a sector solution.

I don’t dispute much of Dan’s analysis but I land in a different place. Vat is an achievable solution to the problem Dan and I agree exists.

#VATsTheProblem.

[Leon Samuel Burton 🇺🇦 @leonburton]

"I want to find the UK's first trillion-dollar firm"

Don't you think you have more important tasks to be getting on with as Business Minister, @peterkyle? Like helping our high streets and hospitality to get out of this sorry state?

Like @UKLabour promised...?

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@DanNeidle I think Hayek covered this in 'The Road to Serfdom'. Central planning leads to excess regulation & control, to disagreement, to enforcement, to oppression, to authoritarianism, and onwards to tyranny. An ideological dream that's disconnected from reality.

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@PikettyWIL I think Hayek covered this in 'The Road to Serfdom'. Central planning leads to excess regulation & control, to disagreement, to enforcement, to oppression, to authoritarianism and onwards to tyranny. An ideological dream that is disconnected from reality.

[Dr. Calum Miller @DrCalumMiller]

I am a medical doctor and I can say clearly: this is not good enough.

Henry Nowak was murdered and the police let him die.

When someone tells you they've been stabbed and are struggling to breathe, unless they pose an obvious risk to your own life, you make sure they are OK before you do anything else.

You don't pause to think about whether they might be racist, or whether they could be making it up.

There must be justice for Henry.

[Lara Trubshaw @LaraInCornwall]

The hospitality industry stands strong together on the fact that #VATstheproblem

Spearheaded by @ChefTomKerridge @BIIandBIIAB & @UKHofficial it’s imperative we get our message in front of of the government to #savehospitality

Sign the petition 👇

https://t.co/a9dHMsbuRE

[Andrew Griffith MP @griffitha]

“Every meeting I have is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’." Quite.

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@conor_matchett AAT level 2 or 3 would understand this is simply fraud. No scrutiny and no one in the audit process spoke out. This is the worst of us and why our country is broken. Leadership has become about power and self enrichment. There is no integrity.

[Kate Nicholls OBE @UKHospKate]

The Govt’s Youth Guarantee and SWAPs funded training are helping with job search support - this issue is that employer cannot afford to fund entry level part time jobs as a result of the halving of NIC threshold increased the tax on these jobs by 75%. It is this which led two thirds of hospitality biz to cut hours and jobs

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@UKHospKate Thanks

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@DanNeidle Easier to answer with 50 billion. 5 billion is 0.5% of total tax take. Not even deck chairs... I wonder if the bond market believed we are serious about growth rates, the bond rate would drop and this would save money.

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@DanNeidle A good question and I'm not sure of the answer, but we NEED growth even to have a chance of economic survival. All fiscal policy must have this as its aim. Growth should not come from increasing the money supply. Painful but crucial.

[AaronPascoe @AaronPascoe9]

@Welly_springer @DanNeidle Should everyone pay some income tax, maybe a low amount 5% or 10%, as it gives them an interest in government spending and increases the chance they will hold the government accountable??