Accountancy Blog

Further tweaks to the apprenticeship levy look certain to be made in the autumn, when new chancellor Savid Javid is expected to deliver his first Budget.

In his final Budget speech in October 2018, former chancellor Philip Hammond halved the amount small firms taking on apprentices had to pay from 10% to 5%.

But Javid revealed his intention “to broaden the apprenticeship levy into a wider skills levy” when writing in the Financial Times shortly after his appointment.

“This would give employers the flexibility they need to train their workforce, while ensuring they continue to back apprenticeships”, Hammond’s successor said.

The levy was introduced in April 2017 and requires employers with annual pay bills of more than £3 million to allocate a sum equal to 0.5% of their wage bill. More…

Some of the UK’s biggest retailers have come together to demand action is taken to revamp the business rates system.

Business leaders from more than 50 companies wrote to chancellor Sajid Javid to ask for four changes.

These include reforming transitional relief, which limits how much a bill can change following revalution.

The letter also called for a freeze in the business rate multiplier, the introduction of a new improvement relief, and for the Valuation Office Agency to be adequately funded.

It said that these four recommendations “could be undertaken quickly, would reduce regional disparities, remove barriers to the proper working of market forces, incentivise economic investment, and cut away at bureaucracy”. More…