Real Business

Chris Lewis's letter to the PM

Monday, 15th October 2007 by Chris Lewis

PR entrepreneur Chris Lewis is so unhappy about the abolition of business taper relief, he's fired off this letter to the PM.

Tax regime for the fat cats will drown the kittens

Over the past ten years, my young colleagues and I have built a company from start-up in London to 300 staff in 35 offices round the world.

Every year, we reinvested our profits to help us grow, and as a consequence the business has grown on average by 20 per cent every year to the current level.

Day by day, year in, year out, we’ve managed the business carefully, never had any debts or overdrafts, and have worked late nights and weekends to make it all happen.

It’s a great success story made all the more unusual because the people involved are so young – 30 years old on average.

When you’re a small company, it’s difficult to attract the best talent, so the schemes you introduced as chancellor helped enormously. Not only did they help by providing tax incentives, they helped by sending a clear message of encouragement that the government was on the side of small business.

So the proposed scrapping of business taper relief damages us in many ways. We can cope with re-jigging our plans. We aspired one day to join the stock market, but that will now have to wait. The most damaging thing of all is the new climate of fear. We’d grown up trusting a labour government, but if this can happen so quickly with no consultation, what’s next?

All of this is out of character for someone who created schemes that did so much for young businesses. It must be a mistake or oversight?

We therefore ask you to please reconsider these plans.

We understand the need to tax the "fat cats". We don’t understand why the kittens need to be drowned in the process.

Yours sincerely,

The partners and employees
LEWIS COMMUNICATIONS LTD