Asda’s Chairman has hit out at Rachel Reeves’s “very, very damaging” tax rises, warning they will force the supermarket to look closely at how many workers it can afford to employ. The Telegraph has the story.
Lord Rose said it was “perfectly” clear that the Chancellor had not delivered a Budget for businesses, saying extra taxes were “disproportionately heavy” on larger companies which employ a lot of staff.
Asda expects its tax bill to rise by £100 million following the Chancellor’s decision to increase employers’ National Insurance (NI) contributions by 1.2% to 15% from April and to lower the level at which they have to start paying it.
Lord Rose said: “This is a very, very damaging piece of extra taxation on business. At the end of the day, it’s not going to add to growth. It’s going to probably be inflationary.
“We’ll pass on de minimis, but there will be some increases. When we make our plan for 2025, it will get us to look very hard at what we can afford.”
He said the supermarket industry was “very efficient”, adding: “Every retailer you speak to will be saying, ‘Bloody hell, this is hard for us.’”
The comments follow a series of warnings over higher grocery prices in recent days. The boss of Marks & Spencer on Wednesday said he could not rule out price increases given the “pretty significant costs” coming down the line. M&S said the NI raid would push its tax bill up by £60 million, with minimum wage changes expected to add another £60 million in costs.
Sainsbury’s on Thursday said it was facing a £140 million hit from the NI changes.
Worth reading in full.
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Well, the difference between the Asda chief and Rachel Thieves (erstwhile tea-lady at the Band of England) is that the former has to run a business while the latter does not.
Rachel Thieves (nice one) couldn’t run a bath.
That’s not a problem, Lord Alli will pay for a bath filler for Thieves.
Even fewer staff than they have now, perhaps. After all, although getting rid of boring jobs is probably alright, cutting back on service to customers isn’t. I don’t mind buying fuel from them, where there is no-one to see (no cash accepted – they require £100 up front on an account at their pumps), but they have a habit of cutting back on check-out staff in the small hours, so one can be in a queue for ages if you don’t want to do it all yourself in the store.
They do not “require £100 up front”. They get an authorisation for that amount from your credit/debit card provider, before you start fuelling. The amount is NOT debited from your account.
Labour = Marxist-Socialism… what did Lord Rose and the idiot voters in July expect?
But, but, but, Thieves had lots of support from business before the election. What’s that Sooty? They were not real business owners running proper businesses? Makes sense as how would anyone employing staff not see being forced to increase wages and pay extra employee tax not see her budget as anti-business and anti-growth. September’s CPI will be the low point before a steady rise, interest rate cuts will be glacial and mortgage rates will stay high due to borrowing costs. Looking forward to months of seeing the Lefties Ofcom force GB News to have on for balance – unlike the BBC etc – being torn to shreds.
How long does a government last these days? They are bound to be aware of this and so any such awareness could easily bring about vandalistic or scorched earth tendencies. The bottled it up for a decade and now they want to splurge on it before they get ousted. The next government, if there ever is another election, will be even worse against a backdrop of even worse conditions.
The whole gist of the last four years was ‘don’t be naive’. So don’t let naivete settle on you like a cloud again. If you are naive this time around then you don’t need me to tell you what you deserve. And bear in mind that your naivete and acquiescence has very negative effects on better people than you. They are likely to give you short shrift at the final reckoning.
How may are left for even considering a fight. You thought it would carry on forever like Terry Wogan and Blankety Blank. I’m afraid it isn’t like that. You8 need to match or surpass every depiction of a Russian or north Korean engaged in mortal combat. If you don’t have it then you belong to the world of the dead and they will take care of you shortly. A big difference between saying shit and living by it.
So Liz Truss was correct with her budget then?
It won’t just be supermarkets reviewing the number of employees they can afford. Any shop which has managed to survive on our devastated High Streets will be doing the same thing and most of them will conclude that they can’t generate the sales to pay the increased minimum wage, NI increases …. plus increased rents and council tax.
If Labour had intended to destroy local communities and town centres they couldn’t have done a better job of it.
So that’s obviously what they wanted.
Of course he’s right BUT it’s fair to point out that Lord Rose is a Conservative peer.