Restart Grants
- Non-essential retail businesses will receive grants of up to £6,000.
- Hospitality and leisure businesses (including personal care and gyms) will open later or with greater restrictions so will be eligible for grants of up to £18,000.
- Additional discretionary business grants funding (ARG) allocated £425m.
- This will replace the current grant system of fortnightly payments (the ARG and the National Restrictions Grant) that ends in March.
We will provide full details of how to apply for these grants as soon as it is available.
Business Rates Holiday
- The 100% business rates holiday will continue to the end of June
- For the remaining nine months of the year, the business rates bill will be cut by two thirds upto a value of £2m per business.
We will continue to lobby for a further 100% holiday.
Furlough
- Furlough will continue to be extended until the end of September.
- From July the government will introduce an employer contribution towards the costs.
We will ask whether this will be extended to those employed in November and December 2020 who have been unable to be furloughed.
Recovery Loans Scheme
- Businesses of any size can apply for loans from £25,000 up to £10m through to the end of this year.
VAT
- Lower rate for hospitality firms to be maintained at 5% until September.
- Interim rate of 12.5% will then apply for the following months.
We will continue to lobby to extend the 5% rate permanently for the hospitality sector.
Self Employment
- The Self Employed Grant will be extended until September.
Other Important Changes
- The minimum wage is to increase to £8.91 an hour from April
- The Tax-Free Personal Allowance is to be frozen at £12,570 from April 2021 to 2026
- Corporation tax on company profits is to rise from 19% to 25% in April 2023, however,
- The Corporation Tax rate is to be kept at 19% for about 1.5 million smaller companies with profits of less than £50,000
- £400m will be available to help arts venues re-open in England, including museums and galleries
- Incentives for firms to take on apprentices to rise to £3,000
- For 2 years any business investing in new equipment can offset 100% of the cost against tax, plus an additional 30%
