KONTAN.CO.ID - LONDON. British businesses demanded that finance minister Rishi Sunak stop raising their taxes and instead offer more help to meet the challenges of Brexit, COVID-19 and climate change when he makes major budget statements next month. The Confederation of British Industry urged Sunak to "flip business taxation on its head" when he sets out new tax proposals and a three-year spending plan on Oct. 27. "The lack of detail and pace from the government on some of the big economic choices we must make as a country are the biggest concerns for business," CBI Director General Tony Danker said in excerpts of a speech to be delivered later on Monday.
Danker told Sunak to stop hitting companies that invest in making their premises less carbon-intensive with increased property tax payments, a quirk of the business rates system. He also said more needed to be done to boost skills training, speed up the development of new infrastructure projects such as Britain's delayed high-speed railway and rewrite market rules to attract more private investment. Read Also: Strong typhoon cuts power, causes flooding in northern Philippines The CBI and other employer groups protested last week that jobs would be lost after the government said it would increase social security contributions to fund social and health care. That followed March's announcement of a big increase in corporation tax from 2023 to help fix the hole in Britain's public finances left by Sunak's 350 billion-pound ($485 billion) spending response to the coronavirus pandemic. "I am deeply worried the government thinks that taxing business - perhaps more politically palatable - is without consequence to growth," Danker said.