I am far from being an expert, but on the other side now it might be easier for Britain to set up more favourable conditions for startups and tech companies since now they don't have to comply with EU laws.
NB Only thing I could think of as being relevant would the working time directive but everyone just opts out of that?
Edit: I did co-found a VC-funded startup in the UK, but not recently, wondering what might have changed!
All those combine will have strong impact on UK, I live in London, and finance is probably 80% of how UK makes money. Most of the goods are imported, we do not produce anything (I am exaggerating but not far from truth). Just to remind, people voted pro Brexit because of a red bus with a large text saying that each week £350 million goes to EU (which was wrong but hey...) that is £18.2 bn a year. Meaning Morgan Stanley is shifting permanently, with one swift move, 6.5 years ... and heaven know about how many jobs... All that also have combined effect as each person working there feeds many others (builders, bakers, creditors...)
"Remain" side was warning about all this, but unfortunately, people have not listened.
One more reason why is harder to succeed with startup... heavy taxes are for those that are at the begining.
I'm talking about IR35. The sole reason it was created is to fight "a tax avoidance loophole" (not my words) where without the intermediary (limited company) the single person would be an employee instead.
Single-person companies are still free to exist, like other companies. What's no longer permitted is employees pretending to be single-person companies.
IR35 is advertised as fair but in fact it is not as on example of Amazon https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/08/amazon-uk...
Those really big are exempted of taxes, you just need to have enough money and good leverage.
Now, why was contracting good in UK? Because short rotation of contact was helping to increase "salaries" (rates). Permanent employees do not negotiate salaries on regular bases, and what I have experienced that they sitting on the same level for years. Natural tendency in capitalism is to maximize profit for shareholders and minimize all expenses in process. Salaries of permanent employees are expense column.
Why is this bad news for all companies, regardless of higher rates, it is easier to discharge contractors. Having very strong unions in UK, that will not go easy with permanent employees. Meaning startups will have issue to find people on short term bases.
And many more things to cut the long story short... Nothing to do with fairness but as Jean-Baptiste famously declared “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”
That new IR35 changes are bad proof is decision to delay it for one year because of pandemic...
Why should directors be taxed differently from employees.
IR35 is a mess but there was undoubtedly a problem with disguised employment.
At the moment NI is only paid on 'earned income' - Salary & Benefits
Merging it into Income Tax would mean it's also applied to 'unearned income' – savings interest, dividends etc
Would also remove the anomaly that people who reach the state pension age don't pay NI even if they carry on working
Oh and now they're losing facilitated access to the whole of EU developers. But I guess that doesn't matter (even though the flood of openings I see on Linkedin, etc)
If you were starting a tech company why would you choose to start a company in a country which appears to be decidedly against the idea of economic cooperation and free trade. A country that is deluded enough to remove itself from one trading block because, apparently, its much stronger on its own.
If your comment refers to some sort of utopia where trade and business is deregulated and capitalists can happily roam in the wild I'm afraid you might be disappointed. The average Brexit voter has significantly more to gain from the welfare state and big government than the current crop of politicians. Regulation isn't going anywhere and is probably going to increase as the government seeks to prop up its finances without the aid of the EU.
I find Brexit an emotive topic, if only because "Project Fear" is and was always going to be "Project Reality".
Also, you say that republicans have fought to reduce reliance on government but in the last 4 years there’s been a big increase in the federal budget to spend more on military. Aren’t they doing the opposite of what you said? And how is that a free economy when tons of new tariffs have been introduced?
I feel sometimes that people don’t realize that the government has been doing the exact opposite of traditional republicans orthodoxy.
I'm speaking about republican citizens, not "republican in name only" politicians, don't conflate the two. Politicians of all parties are guilty of saying and doing different things.
People absolutely realize the government has been doing the exact opposite of what orthodox republicans want, that is what made Trump seem worthy of a dice roll, he campaigned on a bunch of goals that claimed to try and reverse those decisions.Those goals were either thrown out once he realized how difficult it would be to actually accomplish them or thrown out because he never cared to give it a real go. Given the long time government employees that either quit or were fired and the resistance from establishment politicians both D and R I lean towards the first reason.
Indeed the military budget has been increased, that is driven by our need to fight two full-blown wars on two fronts, our military strategy is based on a worst case scenario. That is the goal that is not talked about publicly but is true. We can expect the military budget to continue to increase.
Re tariffs, they are the right strategy. The primary job class that has been reduced is manufacturing. A large chunk of those jobs were lost to China, the only way to bring those jobs back is to make those Chinese government subsidized imports less attractive to buyers. The tariff strategy can work but it looks like we need to tax imported goods that could feasibly be made in the US by 100-300%, only then will you go to Wal-Mart and find that the US Made goods are in the same price range as the Chinese goods. This is the same strategy that Euro zone and Asian countries use to keep their citizens buying local. Our politicians sold us out circa ~1979. The implementation of these tariffs was a half-measure, it takes years to plan/design/build/ a factory and bring those products to market, Trump should have focused on a 20 year plan that both parties agreed to continue after he left office.