Business and Other Briefings
CO: The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, has renewed the government’s pledge to increase support for Britain’s SMEs by ‘calling on big business to follow the Government’s lead and pay their bills promptly’.
He made the call at last week’s Innovation Launch Pad Product Surgery, a special event organised to enable some of Britain’s most innovative and pioneering SMEs to pitch their ideas direct to Government buyers. 9 trailblazing SMEs were chosen for the event – the culmination of a process involving over 2,000 civil servants voting on ideas submitted by 350 SMEs.
WAG: Small retailers should find it easy to manage Wales’s carrier bag charge when it comes into force in October 2011, following an announcement by Environment Minister, John Griffiths. As of 1 October 2011, shoppers in Wales will have to pay a minimum of 5p for every carrier bag they are given, in an effort to dramatically cut down on the excessive number of bags given out each year.
The charge will also mean that retailers in Wales will be obliged to keep a record of the number of bags they issue and account for how proceeds from the carrier charge are used. However, following feedback from the Federation of Small Businesses and other organisations representing the business sector, the Environment Minister has decided that retailers with a headcount of less than 10 would ‘have limited administrative resource and therefore should be exempt from record keeping around the charge’.
This brief explains the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) position following the First Tier Tribunal decision in Paymex Ltd (Case ref (2011) UKFTT 350).
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