New Labour sense: Raise taxes in business rates during a recession their policies caused.

As recession bites Gordon raises taxes to fund government waste.... Alistair Darling the badger haired sockpuppet has on orders from the snot gobbling trouser pisser Gordon, refused to freeze a £1.6billion tax increase on retailers - who are already at breaking point because of nose-diving sales.

The Chancellor has come under pressure to hold off the five per cent increase in business rates due to hit all companies next month.

It is based on the retail prices index from last September. This has since dropped dramatically and is even forecast to be negative later this year as the recession has taken hold.

Official retail sales figures suggest that shoppers took advantage of deep discounts in December with volumes rising 1.6 per cent. However, there was no boost to profit margins.

Sales values actually suffered the biggest drop since 1986, according to the Office for National Statistics and consumer demand is continuing to fall.

Dozens of retail chiefs have attacked the Government's plan to increase business rates, claiming it will add tens of millions of pounds to their tax bills at the worst possible time.

The trade magazine Retail Week has been running a campaign - Rate Rage - to force the Treasury into a re-think.

A spokesman for the Department of Communities and Local Government said: 'The Government keeps all tax policy under review, but there are no plans to amend the business rates system.'

He said freezing rates for next year 'would not significantly help individual businesses'.

Brilliant, if ever there was a government setting out to cause a perfect fiscal storm it is this lot. By raising taxes they will create more job losses, less money in the economy and further debt for government through lower receipts of taxes.

From Retail Week

In a letter to Retail Week in response to our Rate Rage campaign, Darling said that there are no plans to amend the policy under which rates will rise next month based on last September's 5 per cent inflation rate. "Freezing business rates would cost almost £1bn," he said.

• Read Alistair Darling's letter to Retail Week

Darling also reiterated his commitment to the 2010 revaluation, which is based on property values two years previously. At that time retailers will face even bigger rises because the value of retail property rose more rapidly than other types of property when the market was good. However, Darling defended the system.

"Revaluation does not, in itself, raise extra revenue," he said. "It simply redistributes the tax to reflect changes in the property market across the country."

Now note the 2 points, he has already admitted that: 

"Freezing business rates would cost almost £1bn,"n receipts to HM Govt. 

So it costs tax revenue to the Government. Then he says: 

"Revaluation does not, in itself, raise extra revenue,".

Well yes it does, he just pointed that out in his first statement. He misses the point that higher taxes will push under businesses, cause them to shed staff and kill the tax raising goose. 

We are governed by inept fuckwits with no business skill what so ever. The badger even contradicted his own words in the same fucking paragraph, maybe he should start working on The Grauniad with Polly Toynbee...

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