TAXES on firms must go up to stop the economy tanking like it did under Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak warned today.
The PM defended plans to hike Corporation Tax by 6 per cent as crucial to wrestling down record debt.
Rishi Sunak says Corporation Tax needs to go up to curb borrowing
Former PM Liz Truss wanted to keep Corporation Tax at 19 per cent
He said curbing borrowing “might sound boring, but I tell you, it’s deeply important” so kids are not saddled with the burden.
Britain’s debt is currently more than £2.4trillion – the highest since the 1960s – and is set to rise.
Mr Sunak said hiking business tax from 19 to 25 per cent would help cut the pile, insisting: “We’re borrowing an enormous amount of money. That’s not good. It’s not good for the country.
“We’ve got to get our borrowing down. We’ve got to do that in a responsible way.
“And that’s going to help us do it. And if you get that stuff wrong – what happened last year – we already got interest rates higher than we’d like them to sort of get to us and that’s why we have got to get our borrowing back down.”
Homeowners were left despairing last autumn when banks hiked mortgage repayment rates following Mr Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget.
Among sweeping tax cuts, she proposed to scrap the planned increase in Corporation Tax, saying it would make Britain less attractive.
Tory MPs are still making her case as Jeremy Hunt was handed a £30billion pre-Budget windfall after duff forecasts were proved wrong by soaring tax takes.
And Northern Ireland voters today grilled Mr Sunak on why he was making them even less attractive than the Republic’s 12.5 per cent rate.
The PM said: This is why you don’t need to worry about it. At 25 per cent, it will still be the lowest rate out of all the large economies that we compete with around the world.
“It also only applies to the biggest 10 per cent of companies.”
