In an interview ahead of this week’s Global Investment Summit, Boris Johnson claimed that the UK is ‘a colossally attractive place for people to come and invest‘, and promised that it ‘will be even more attractive as a place to invest and do business‘ in future.
But new analysis from the Centre for Policy Studies and the US-based Tax Foundation shows that the UK is heading in the wrong direction if it wants to retain this status.
The combination of the Health and Social Care Levy, increases in corporation tax and the withdrawal of the super-deduction for investment mean that by 2023, the UK is set to fall from 22nd to 30th out of 37 OECD nations on the Tax Foundation’s blue-chip Tax Competitiveness Index.
We will fall from 23rd to 31st on personal taxation, and from 18th to 31st on corporate taxation – having briefly risen as high as 11th place, thanks to the impact of the temporary super-deduction for capital investment.
The Centre for Policy Studies is therefore launching a major research programme, sponsored by Shore Capital, to explore how ministers can pull Britain back up the rankings, and make it the leading global destination for investors and investment.
The think tank is also publishing a briefing paper today by Tom Clougherty, Head of Tax, which sets out the problems with Britain’s current tax regime and the devastating impact on competitiveness that the planned increases will have.
Tom Clougherty - Tuesday, 26th October, 2021
Tom is Head of Tax at the CPS. He was previously executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, before moving to the US to become managing editor at the Reason Foundation, and then a senior editor at the Cato Institute, the leading Washington think-tank.
