Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and his constituents for the advice; and, while we are at it, I wish him a happy birthday. The digital services tax aims to improve sustainability and fairness in the tax system. Separately, the Government have announced measures to support small retailers by cutting their business rates by one third for two years. Just to put that in a local context for my hon. Friend, there are 660 retail properties in Harborough local authority area with a rateable value of below £51,000, which means that there are 660 properties that could benefit.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

14. Before we get too excited about this, we should bear it in mind that it is still a small amount of the profits of these large companies that will come into the Exchequer. Will the Chancellor explain the timetable for the consultation and when he expects to get any tax revenue into the Exchequer from this measure?

[Mr Hammond]

As I said last week, the proposal is to introduce the tax in 2020, but in the meantime we will continue to lead international negotiations on the potential for an internationally agreed tax. Such a tax would in fact be preferable to nationally implemented schemes, but at the moment it is proving very difficult to agree. I hope that, by the time we get to our implementation date in April 2020, we may yet have made progress on an internationally agreed measure.