The hospitality sector’s new tax campaign underlines the baffling status-quo in which publicans are now obliged to hand the majority of their profit to the state. Why, one asks, would anyone pay money to the Government than they do to themselves, least of all the beleaguered landlords under intense pressure to keep their pubs alive?
Trade association UKHospitality launched a new hard-hitting publicity campaign this week, aiming to highlight the absurd trading paradigm pub landlords are facing.
A new ad displays two pints of lager, with the caption “the government made more from your pint than the pub did.”
A spokesperson for the trade body explained on LinkedIn that the new ad was “not a joke,” and indeed represented the new “reality for thousands of pubs, bars, hotels, and restaurants across the UK.”
“With huge business rates, VAT bills, and employment taxes, hospitality is being #taxedout,” they added.
Since the 2024 Budget, UKHospitality says that nearly 75 per cent of pre-tax profits from pubs go straight into the Treasury’s coffers. Meanwhile, 89,000 jobs have been lost throughout the sector over the same time period, with member surveys indicating the widespread cutting of operating hours alongside the increase of prices.
For its part, the trade body has renewed its tireless calls for a threefold redress by government: by applying a VAT cut for hospitality, as well as a substantive reform to business rates and a roll back of the new NIC threshold.
Meanwhile, remarking on the organisation’s latest ad, DiscoBowl chief executive Pete Terry wrote that the status quo was indicative of the fact that “sadly the ministers are clueless about the real world.”
They are also, probably, completely unaware that pubs give more to the government than they earn themselves – and one doubts that any MP would ever consider paying circa £50,000 of their basic £93,904 salary to the Treasury, nor any of their second income.
Hospitality being taxed out
UKHospitality said……. “The ad is not a joke…it represents the new reality for thousands of pubs, bars, hotels, and restaurants across the UK…With huge business rates, VAT bills, and employment taxes, hospitality is being taxedout……
