Eurotunnel, the operator of the Channel Tunnel, has halted its UK projects, claiming “unsustainable” levels of taxation has made any future investments “non-viable”.
The company said it had been informed its business rates would increase by some 200% from next year.
It hit out at the government, arguing that the higher costs were “clearly contrary” to ambitions of growing the economy and increasing investment.
The Treasury said it would support firms “hit hardest” by tax hikes and would continue talks with affected industries over such concerns.
Join the fucking club, pal. Why not save some money by paying your execs and shareholders a bit less?
A 200% increase might mean from 1% to 3%. Also, this sounds a lot like blackmail.
I think it’s closer to extortion.
it had scrapped plans to reopen a freight terminal in Barking and to run a new direct freight service from Lille.
Fine, let another freight operator have them, then.
Meanwhile, their biggest shareholder is still building part of HS2. 🤷
Yep.
it had scrapped plans to reopen a freight terminal in Barking and to run a new direct freight service from Lille.
… and the UK population who knew about it gave a little shrug.
Other operators do use the tunnel. There’s a weekly train from Seville carrying oranges for Tesco.
Yes, and maybe one of them would like the depot or to run an extra service. That’s what I’m saying. Eurostar hasn’t been allowed to hog the Temple Mills train depot, so why should Eurotunnel hoard the Barking freight depot on the link to the state-owned LTS line? These depots are expensive to build and can only go in limited places, so they should use it, sell it, or lose it.
Would network rail like to buy it?
Are “business rates” income taxes? If so, it makes no difference to investment decisions. If investment is profitable (after all existing and future expenses including interest on debt deducted) then it is also profitable after taxes.
No they’re more like business property taxes, they’re complicated but usually defined as a fraction of what the market rate rent would be on the property the business is using.
With this news, now would be the perfect time to start the discussion of converting one of the 2 train tunnels into a road for EV’s and electric lorries. Tailpipe exhaust is THE reason why cars today must be loaded into a train for the trip . . . EV’s make that unnecessary.
If they are not going to invest . . . lets re-purpose part of it.
