King’s Road Partnership are calling on businesses to make a short submission ahead of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. The Statement, on Wednesday 22nd November, is the next formal opportunity for the Chancellor to comment on tax-free shopping. It is vital that as many businesses and organisations as possible make an advance submission asking him to act now on tax-free shopping.

The Treasury has called for submissions with a closing date of Friday 13th October. Your submission only needs to be between 1-2 pages in length.

You can find HM Treasury’s guidance for making a submission here.

Your submission should call for the Chancellor to restore tax-free shopping and suggest that he commissions an independent assessment into the full impact of tax-free shopping on the economy and tax revenues.

Issues you could mention include –

• Details of your business
• Why international visitors are so important
• Why tax-free shopping is so important
• The impact on your business of ending tax-free shopping
• Behavioural changes you have noticed by international visitors, both in choosing to visit the UK and in their level of spending
• Any comparisons between your performance and that of competitors in France, Spain and Italy to show how Britain is underperforming in relative terms
• What the consequences will be of any impact (investment, jobs, etc)
• What you think benefits would be of restoring tax-free shopping
• What you think the benefits would be of extending tax-free shopping to visitors from the UK

Please aim to send your submission by the deadline of Friday 13th October in order to show the strength of feeling by British businesses.