AAT Public Affairs & Public Policy activities (April 2019)

Every month AAT highlights some of the key Public Affairs & Public Policy activities undertaken on behalf of our 140,000 members.

Below you will find some key highlights for April 2019.

If you would like any further information about any of these issues, please contact Phil Hall, AAT Head of Public Affairs & Public Policy via twitter or via email.

Plastic Packaging Tax

AAT’s response to the current Plastic Packaging Tax was extremely well received by several MPs, Peers and various environmental charities including WWF, Greenpeace and the Wildlife & Countryside Link, who have used our response to inform their own. It has also been utilised by a few law firms who advise their clients on such matters. 

AAT does not believe that applying the tax to plastic packaging with less than 30% recycled content is sufficiently ambitious and certainly cannot be considered “world leading” as Government suggests. 
 
Instead, AAT believes that a threshold of 40% would be more appropriate, with a further increase to 50% in 2030 to ensure momentum is not lost. 

However, one Baroness did get in touch to ask if we realised the cost of the tax would be passed on to consumers and if we had anything better to do! 

In fact, the cost of doing nothing is already very high - in 2016 to 2017 it cost local authorities in the UK £682 million (£29 per household) to keep our streets clean, with plastic waste accounting for much of this litter. In addition, Highways England spends over £6 million a year collecting plastic bottles, food packaging and other litter from the Strategic Road Network. That’s to say nothing of the well documented $13bn annual cost of marine damage from plastic. 

The cost of doing nothing is far greater than the cost of doing something.

Read AAT’s Plastic Packaging Tax response

Care ISA

Government will shortly be publishing the long overdue Green Paper on Social Care.

Ahead of this publication, the House of Commons library published a 55-page research paper for Members of Parliament for their use in the likely debates that will take place on the subject.

Page 18 of the paper comprehensively covers AAT’s views on the proposed “Social Care ISA” (an ISA that AAT does not support) as well as the general findings of our ISA simplification report published in March 2018 which suggested reducing rather than increasing the number of ISAs. 

Read the report here

Executive Pay

AAT member views, and our MP Survey results on Executive Pay, continue to attract Parliamentary attention with BEIS Select Committee member Peter Kyle MP stating, “AAT are at the vanguard on this and it really is appreciated.”

Labour MPs Valerie Vaz and Siobhain McDonagh have also acknowledged the positive role of AAT in this important area of policy debate. 

Prompt Payment

The issue of late payments again received much national media attention, primarily due to the high-profile case of Holland & Barrett failing to pay 60% of its invoices within agreed terms and taking an average of 68 days to pay suppliers – prompting the wrath of MPs, the Small Business Commissioner and many in the media.

This again highlights the weakness of Government policy in this area and the attractiveness of AAT’s proposed recommendations for reform. A further letter to the Business Minister with responsibility for this area was therefore despatched ahead of an imminent decision on the way forward. 

Separately, The Times published a story about the Small Business Commissioner’s poor performance, which very briefly made reference to our view that he has no real powers. 

Business Rates

Following on from our response to the Treasury Select Committee inquiry into this tax, engagement with several MPs and Peers took place in April. 

However, our engagement extended well beyond the political world with think tanks, business advisory firms and even the University of Toronto expressing an interest in our work on the issue.

Read the Business Rates response in full here.

Intergenerational Fairness

Back in 2018, AAT submitted a detailed response to the House of Lords Intergenerational Fairness Committee, explaining how some changes to the tax and benefits system could deliver greater intergenerational fairness.

The Committee published their report last month and its recommendations mirror many longstanding AAT policy objectives from reforming Stamp Duty and Inheritance Tax to aligning pensioner benefits with the state pension age and introducing intergenerational impact assessments when proposing any new tax policy.

Read the Intergenerational Fairness Committee report in full here.

Parliamentary engagement

Mark and I met with Lord Lucas to discuss apprenticeships and I met with numerous other politicians to discuss a wide range of issues.

In total, engagement with almost twenty MPs and Peers took place on issues from Intergenerational Fairness and business rates to the Plastic Packaging Tax and Making Tax Digital. 

AAT Consultations, Calls for Evidence & Inquiry responses

AAT responded to consultations on the business reporting of intangibles, guidance from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the Plastic Packaging Tax and IR35 (Off-payroll working).

Read these responses together with hundreds of others dating back to 2014 on the AAT Public Policy responses page.

Other events, meetings and engagement

• Attendance at the IFS 50th anniversary lecture proved worthwhile, leading to subsequent exchanges with IFS executives in relation to AAT member views on VAT and intergenerational fairness, and with HMRC in relation to IR35
• Conversations with the Head of the Barclays AgriTech Lab were productive, revealing unexpected overlap with the agriculture and accountancy sectors, especially in relation to the adoption of technology and encouraging young people to consider our respective industries as a career
• Discussing the Companies Act with MPs and Peers enabled me to highlight AAT member views on Executive Pay, our campaign on prompt payment and our views on section 172 of the Companies Act
• The APPG on Small Business and access to finance provided a new audience to inform about AAT’s work with SME’s and our Prompt Payment Campaign. 
• The APPG on Women and Work provided a wealth of information about how to be more inclusive in relation to the employment of disabled women
• The APPG on Inheritance Tax & Intergenerational Fairness discussed radical ideas to reform Inheritance Tax, utilising some of the ideas AAT had previously put forward

If you would like more information about any of the above, our activities in general, previous copies of the monthly round-up or think we might be able to help your work in any way, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Keep up-to-date with AAT’s Public Affairs & Policy activities on Twitter: @PhilHallAAT