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Reduce VAT.
Reverse NICs.
Restore business rates relief.
And stop pretending soundbites are solutions.
That’s the message, scrawled in block capitals on a pub A-frame, doing the rounds on social media today (August 5, 2025).
It’s part of a growing movement under the hashtag #TaxedOut – a last-ditch plea from hospitality businesses across the UK who are being bled dry.
And just one day after I asked whether the government’s so-called “plan for small business” was a product of ignorance, stupidity… or something more deliberate, we have our answer.
This isn’t just a stray opinion.
This is a coordinated industry campaign.
And its message is devastatingly clear.
A-Frame, a hashtag, a warning
That handwritten sign outside the pub isn’t just pub banter—it’s a dispatch from the frontline of a collapsing industry.
#TaxedOut is now the banner under which hospitality businesses are rallying, in a campaign led by UKHospitality, supported by the British Beer & Pub Association, and a host of other sector organisations.
They’re demanding three key reforms:
-
Reduce VAT on hospitality services
-
Reverse the decision to increase National Insurance Contributions
-
Restore the 75 per cent business rates relief that was scrapped this year
This isn’t a wishlist – it’s a lifeline.
Since the 2024 Budget, hospitality has lost more than 69,000 jobs.
One-third of businesses are now operating at a loss.
Customer numbers are still down by 25 per cent since 2019.
Those are the industry’s own figures—and they make a mockery of the government’s claims to be supporting small business growth.
The A-frame outside that pub wasn’t a prop.
It was a protest.
The plan that won’t work – because it wasn’t meant to
In the previous article, I laid out how the government’s new “Small Business Plan” offers little to the hospitality sector beyond platitudes and portal logins.
There is nothing in it to address the real, material costs that are crushing pubs, cafés, restaurants and takeaways.
Business rates are up.
Employer National Insurance is up.
VAT is still at 20 per cent, while most of Europe supports their hospitality with rates of between 10 and 13 per cent.
That’s not support – it’s a slow strangulation.
And here’s the kicker: these issues aren’t new. Trade bodies have been shouting about them for years. Ministers can’t claim they don’t know. So what’s left?
If they know, and still refuse to act, then this isn’t negligence.
It’s policy.
So who benefits?
It’s worth asking: who is doing well out of all this?
Certainly it’s not the small local pub with four staff and a part-time cook.
Nor is it the café that relies on the school rush and pensioners’ lunches.
Nor even the takeaway that’s been part of the high street since the 1990s.
But what about:
-
Big chains with the capital to absorb short-term tax hits?
-
Tech delivery platforms that scoop 30 per cent off the top of every order?
-
Developers eyeing up closed pubs for conversion into flats or co-working hubs?
You see, when thousands of small hospitality firms go under, someone profits. Someone always does.
This plan doesn’t look like a blueprint for recovery.
It looks like a strategy for market consolidation—where the few get bigger, and the many disappear.
The war on pub culture
We often talk about pubs and cafés as “hospitality,” but that term is really too sanitary—too neutral.
These are not just businesses. They are spaces of social life, especially for the working class.
Pubs are where friends gather without an entry fee; where people mark birthdays and funerals; where communities talk politics, grieve losses, and get out of the house when everything else feels shut down.
The destruction of these spaces isn’t just economic—it’s cultural.
So when a government—a Labour government, no less—presides over policy that accelerates the closure of pubs and cafés, it isn’t just failing to listen. It’s turning its back on the very class it claims to represent.
From shout to slogan
The #TaxedOut campaign doesn’t use spin.
It doesn’t talk about “unlocking potential” or “empowering entrepreneurs.”
It says exactly what’s happening: hospitality is being taxed out of existence.
And it does what this government refuses to do—it names the real costs, the real consequences, and the real culprits.
Before, I argued that the Small Business Plan had no real strategy for growth.
If it’s any kind of strategy at all, it’s one of elimination.
And today, with #TaxedOut, the people being eliminated have spoken – loudly, visibly, and before long, perhaps permanently.
Share this post:
#TaxedOut and shut out: hospitality’s cry for help
Share this post:
That’s the message, scrawled in block capitals on a pub A-frame, doing the rounds on social media today (August 5, 2025).
It’s part of a growing movement under the hashtag #TaxedOut – a last-ditch plea from hospitality businesses across the UK who are being bled dry.
And just one day after I asked whether the government’s so-called “plan for small business” was a product of ignorance, stupidity… or something more deliberate, we have our answer.
This isn’t just a stray opinion.
This is a coordinated industry campaign.
And its message is devastatingly clear.
A-Frame, a hashtag, a warning
That handwritten sign outside the pub isn’t just pub banter—it’s a dispatch from the frontline of a collapsing industry.
#TaxedOut is now the banner under which hospitality businesses are rallying, in a campaign led by UKHospitality, supported by the British Beer & Pub Association, and a host of other sector organisations.
They’re demanding three key reforms:
Reduce VAT on hospitality services
Reverse the decision to increase National Insurance Contributions
Restore the 75 per cent business rates relief that was scrapped this year
This isn’t a wishlist – it’s a lifeline.
Since the 2024 Budget, hospitality has lost more than 69,000 jobs.
One-third of businesses are now operating at a loss.
Customer numbers are still down by 25 per cent since 2019.
Those are the industry’s own figures—and they make a mockery of the government’s claims to be supporting small business growth.
The A-frame outside that pub wasn’t a prop.
It was a protest.
The plan that won’t work – because it wasn’t meant to
In the previous article, I laid out how the government’s new “Small Business Plan” offers little to the hospitality sector beyond platitudes and portal logins.
There is nothing in it to address the real, material costs that are crushing pubs, cafés, restaurants and takeaways.
Business rates are up.
Employer National Insurance is up.
VAT is still at 20 per cent, while most of Europe supports their hospitality with rates of between 10 and 13 per cent.
That’s not support – it’s a slow strangulation.
And here’s the kicker: these issues aren’t new. Trade bodies have been shouting about them for years. Ministers can’t claim they don’t know. So what’s left?
If they know, and still refuse to act, then this isn’t negligence.
It’s policy.
So who benefits?
It’s worth asking: who is doing well out of all this?
Certainly it’s not the small local pub with four staff and a part-time cook.
Nor is it the café that relies on the school rush and pensioners’ lunches.
Nor even the takeaway that’s been part of the high street since the 1990s.
But what about:
Big chains with the capital to absorb short-term tax hits?
Tech delivery platforms that scoop 30 per cent off the top of every order?
Developers eyeing up closed pubs for conversion into flats or co-working hubs?
You see, when thousands of small hospitality firms go under, someone profits. Someone always does.
This plan doesn’t look like a blueprint for recovery.
It looks like a strategy for market consolidation—where the few get bigger, and the many disappear.
The war on pub culture
We often talk about pubs and cafés as “hospitality,” but that term is really too sanitary—too neutral.
These are not just businesses. They are spaces of social life, especially for the working class.
Pubs are where friends gather without an entry fee; where people mark birthdays and funerals; where communities talk politics, grieve losses, and get out of the house when everything else feels shut down.
The destruction of these spaces isn’t just economic—it’s cultural.
So when a government—a Labour government, no less—presides over policy that accelerates the closure of pubs and cafés, it isn’t just failing to listen. It’s turning its back on the very class it claims to represent.
From shout to slogan
The #TaxedOut campaign doesn’t use spin.
It doesn’t talk about “unlocking potential” or “empowering entrepreneurs.”
It says exactly what’s happening: hospitality is being taxed out of existence.
And it does what this government refuses to do—it names the real costs, the real consequences, and the real culprits.
Before, I argued that the Small Business Plan had no real strategy for growth.
If it’s any kind of strategy at all, it’s one of elimination.
And today, with #TaxedOut, the people being eliminated have spoken – loudly, visibly, and before long, perhaps permanently.
Share this post:
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