Hotel industry chief executives are to hold crisis meetings with Treasury officials this week over a retrospective tax that would cost the industry an estimated £500m a year. Sunday Telegraph
Gordon Brown’s budget this year removed the hotel building allowance, a 4%-a-year tax concession for hotel owners spanning the first 25 years of every newly built hotel. The concession was introduced 30 years ago to encourage investment in the sector and help make projects financially viable.
Bob Cotton, chief executive of the British Hospitality Association which represents the owners of more than 650,000 bedrooms in the UK, is determined to halt the 'cheap tax grab'.
'The removal of hotel building allowance will cost the UK hotel industry about £500m every year. That means we’ll be £2bn down by 2012. By coincidence that is the exact figure we were told the tourism industry would benefit from due to London hosting the Olympic Games,' he said.
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