There's No Place for Politics in Business

On the day HMRC reveals corporation tax receipts from business shot up 28.5% year-on-year in March David Banfield reminds us there is no place in business for politics. 

In the latest economic downturn the US Government set aside billions of dollars for small business and virtually none was ever used.

The reason: Government did not think it through with a workable distribution system.

Why is this important?

Because history is repeating itself, only this time it’s on Britain’s shore and it’s affecting English businesses.

The recent revelation that £5.5bn of European money, most of which is to be allocated to supporting English SMEs, is being held up as a result of political squabbling between Local Enterprise Partnerships, Central Government and European bureaucrats demonstrates once again how Britain's SMEs need to take their destiny into their own hands.

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While one would like to see greater Government support and facilitation of the UK's small and medium enterprises, there can be no doubt that the dependence on and non-release of such funds hampers start-ups and existing business, even in the franchise sector.

The reality is that British businesses must become more self-sufficient and less reliant on the whims of politicians.

Despite the fact that banking regulation is making it increasingly harder to secure a business loan and the Government is tampering in an area where it lacks the qualification to do so, it has actually never been easier to secure finance to grow your business.

Today, we have the luxury of choosing from a host of secondary financing services, from peer-to-peer lending and crowd funding to the space I operate in, which is invoice discounting and spot factoring. Neither the Government nor money should ever hold your business back.

While Government should be left to govern and the business world should take care of business, the hard truth of it is that they will always be intertwined: Government officials will continue to propose poorly thought-out plans and execute them inefficiently and we as business people will have little to no control over it.

Where we can begin to make a change though is in the means by which we invest in the growth and development of our companies and the cushion we create to protect ourselves from failed grant applications to tax hikes and government levies.