More promotion of tax incentives needed

Date: 29th August 2008

The government needs to do more to make information about tax incentives available to small businesses, one pressure group has said.

The calls come after the Telegraph reported that small businesses were unaware of the government's rate relief scheme. In fact, the paper claimed that "more than £200 million remains unclaimed each year across England since the scheme was introduced in 2005".

Responding to the report, Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) spokesperson Marc Shoffman said that there was currently confusion about the best way to promote tax incentives to small businesses.

He explained that a large number of government bodies, as well as local councils, were supposed to make businesses aware of the ways they could save tax.

"Given the current economic downturn we believe that there's an onus on all government agencies that collect money from small businesses to highlight any opportunity for small businesses not to pay so much tax," Mr Shoffman added.

"Small business rate relief should be automatically applied to ratepayers' bills without businesses needing to spend time applying. Businesses that have premises, particularly retail or catering premises, are most affected."