Asked by: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps the Government has taken to support businesses that are unable to purchase essential materials from the EU.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Government has put in place a range of measures to facilitate trade with the EU and to avoid disruption at ports including publishing comprehensive guidance on the new arrangements for trade with the EU and operating a staged approach to customs controls. Until 31 December 2021 most traders importing non-controlled goods from the EU can make a declaration in their own records and defer making a customs declaration to HMRC for 175 days. Further information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/delaying-declarations-for-eu-goods-brought-into-great-britain. The Government has also provided a £20 million Brexit Support Fund to support small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) in adjusting to new customs, rules of origin, and VAT rules when trading with the EU.
In addition, businesses can choose to use customs facilitations to make trading across borders quicker, cheaper and easier. Further information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-if-you-can-delay-customs-duty-and-import-vat.
Asked by: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what measures the Government has put in place to support businesses that have experienced a decline in (a) exports and (b) imports between December 2020 and March 2021.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Government has put in place a range of measures to facilitate trade with the EU and to avoid disruption at ports including publishing comprehensive guidance on the new arrangements for trade with the EU and operating a staged approach to customs controls. Until 31 December 2021 most traders importing non-controlled goods from the EU can make a declaration in their own records and defer making a customs declaration to HMRC for 175 days. Further information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/delaying-declarations-for-eu-goods-brought-into-great-britain. The Government has also provided a £20 million Brexit Support Fund to support small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) in adjusting to new customs, rules of origin, and VAT rules when trading with the EU.
In addition, businesses can choose to use customs facilitations to make trading across borders quicker, cheaper and easier. Further information can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-if-you-can-delay-customs-duty-and-import-vat.
Asked by: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the Government's guidance is to UK-based banks on allowing money transfers to Sudan-based bank accounts.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
HM Treasury is responsible for the Money Laundering Regulations, which set out the high-level requirements on regulated firms to combat money laundering and ensure that key professionals verify their customers’ identities.
The Regulations are not prescriptive in setting out how firms should carry out customer due diligence and instead require firms to take a proportionate approach commensurate with their assessment of the risk. Each firm will therefore have their own policies on identification and customer due diligence, including on when additional, more comprehensive checks should be undertaken.
Specific guidance on how banks should conduct customer due diligence is published by the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group. This includes guidance on assessing the money laundering and terrorist financing risk associated with individual countries.
Asked by: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the evidential basis was for not raising the Capital Gains Tax in line with Income Tax as part of Budget 2021.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Government keeps all taxes under review, and any changes are made at fiscal events within the context of wider public finances. As demonstrated in last month’s Budget, the Government’s priority is supporting jobs and the economic recovery from the pandemic.
Any changes to the tax system will balance the need to raise revenue with the principles of fairness and market efficiency.
Asked by: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he has taken to support self-employed taxi drivers experiencing reductions in work as a result of the covid-19 outbreak and who require financial support to bridge the gaps between receipt of Self-Employment Income Support Scheme grants.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Government recognises that this is a challenging time for many sectors and individuals, including self-employed taxi drivers.
The Government has acted to support those that are self-employed and have been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, and announced at Budget 2021 that the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) will continue until September, with a fourth and a final fifth grant.
The Government will have spent over £33 billion supporting those in self-employment through the SEISS, making it one of the most generous self-employment income COVID-19 support schemes in the world.
The SEISS is not intended to provide a month-by-month replacement of income. Due to the volatility of self-employed income and the lack of granular data that HMRC holds on self-employed trading profits, precise mapping of income replacement month by month is not possible. Instead, the SEISS provides a lump sum payment to support eligible self-employed individuals whose businesses have been affected by coronavirus.
The SEISS is just one part of a wider package of support for the self-employed, which includes automatic, self-serve time-to-pay arrangements, loans, welfare support, and other business support grants.
Asked by: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he has taken to support self-employed people who have had no financial income for the duration of the covid-19 restrictions and lockdowns who are ineligible for support through universal credit or the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) has provided and will continue to provide generous support to self-employed people who meet the eligibility criteria. The Government will have spent over £33 billion supporting those in self-employment through the SEISS, making it one of the most generous self-employment income COVID support schemes in the world.
The Government is bringing more people into the scheme: changes to the fourth grant mean that over 600,000 people previously ineligible for SEISS may now be eligible, including those newly self-employed in 2019-20. This brings the total number of people who could be eligible to 3.7m.
The Government recognises that some of the rules, criteria and conditions vital to ensuring that the SEISS works for the vast majority mean that some people may not qualify.
Those ineligible for the SEISS may still be eligible for other elements of the support available. The Government has decided to extend the suspension of the Universal Credit Minimum Income Floor for three months, to the end of July 2021, so that where self-employed claimants' earnings have fallen significantly, their Universal Credit award will have increased to reflect their lower earnings.
New style Jobseeker’s Allowance is also available to individuals with sufficient National Insurance Contributions who now work under 16 hours a week on average, and does not assess household capital.
Self-employed people may also have access to other elements of support available, including Restart Grants, the Recovery Loan scheme, business rates relief, and other business support schemes.
Asked by: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that banks, building societies and other financial institutions report accurate financial data to HMRC; and what redress is available in the event of financial institutions’ non-compliance.
Answered by Jesse Norman
Banks, building societies and other financial institutions are required to provide a variety of information returns to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) on an accurate and timely basis. They are subject to HMRC’s usual compliance processes and if the information provided is late or found to be inaccurate following a compliance check, the taxpayer may be subject to penalties.
The UK’s largest businesses, which includes many financial institutions, are subject to an enhanced risk review, as part of HMRC’s Business Risk Review process.
In addition to this, over 98% of banks and building societies are signatories to the Code of Practice on Taxation for Banks. Their commitments under the Code include complying with their tax obligations, which include providing accurate information to HMRC, as well as maintaining a transparent relationship with HMRC. If a signatory is found to be in breach of these commitments, HMRC are able to disclose this, naming the bank in their annual report on the Code.
Asked by: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of increasing corporation tax now for those companies with a higher profit margin during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jesse Norman
It is right that businesses share in the burden of restoring the public finances to a sustainable footing; that is why the Government announced an increase in the rate of Corporation Tax at Budget. The rate increase will not come into force until April 2023, by which time GDP is forecast to have recovered to its pre-pandemic level.
Companies that have made profits during the pandemic have continued to pay Corporation Tax on those profits as normal. Corporation Tax is charged in line with the level of a company’s profits, so more profitable companies will have contributed more.
Asked by: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of publishing an exhaustive list of the items to be included in the Plastic Packaging Tax that will take effect from April 2022.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
The Government is currently in the early stages of implementing the tax via the primary legislation, which by its nature, only provides relatively high-level definitions as a foundation for the tax. As the Government moves to the next stage of implementing the tax, it will work with industry to develop regulations and guidance to provide clarity on how businesses determine the types of product that will be taxable.
Asked by: Zarah Sultana (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of extending the VAT exemption on personal protective equipment available for (a) funeral homes and (b) other businesses.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The temporary zero rate was an extraordinary measure introduced to help affected sectors such as hospitals and care homes during the initial acute period of the COVID-19 crisis, when global supply of PPE did not meet demand and PPE was procured directly from the open market.
Companies in the funeral sector source their own PPE through their normal supply routes. In extreme circumstances, there is provision for them to approach their Local Resilience Forum (LRF) or local authority, where the LRF has stood down, to discuss access to an emergency supply. Given this, there are no plans to review the VAT treatment of PPE.