The Times newspaper recently asked readers to rank the UK against five key competitors for tax, business friendliness, infrastructure, skills and workforce.
It will probably come as no surprise to learn that voters ranked the UK last when it came to personal and business taxation. In fact that UK didn’t come out smelling of roses many categories!
On the plus side, 57% of respondents believe the UK is a better place than France to do business, and 56% said it is better than doing business in India. Voters were also reasonably positive about the British workforce’s skills and the quality of education, although Germany and France ranked higher.
On the down side, 70% believes the UK performs worse than the US on personal taxation and 75% says it has worse wealth creation taxes. In fact a mere 6% of the respondents said were happy with the rates of personal taxation in the UK and only 7% said corporation and capital gains taxes were good or excellent.
The US, China and Germany were all ranked above the UK when it comes to setting up and running a business. 23% said the UK was a good place to set up but 30% said it was either poor or very poor.
However, the UK coalition wants to make Britain more small business and limited company contractor friendly and plans to open up more contracts to smaller firms. The government has also been trying to crack down on the issue of late payment to help small businesses better manage their cash flow.
The CBI welcomes the coalition’s moves but warns that smaller firms still have a number of obstacles to overcome. Chief policy director, Katja Hall, has urged SMEs to focus on the long-term outcome when they bid for public sector contracts. To compete with the larger players, SMEs must think about the outcomes and what it is they hope to achieve.
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