martes, 4 de enero de 2011

The £3 pint - The Sun

A PINT at the pub will bust the THREE QUID mark today - sparking fury among landlords over the 2.5 per cent rise in VAT.

Drinks trade experts warned the hike will lead to 8,800 job losses - with more to come when beer duty rises by another 5p in March.

The British Beer and Pub Association said of drinkers having to pay a sobering 3.06 for the average pint: "It's another tax blow for the industry."

Chief executive Brigid Simmonds said beer duty had risen by 26 per cent in the past two years - forcing thousands of pubs to the wall when they could have been CREATING jobs. She warned: "The Treasury is piling tax on top of tax."

The VAT rise - from 17.5 per cent to 20 - will slap more than 6p on a pint as pubs reel from a slump in beer sales from over 14.4 million pints a day in 2007 to just 11.4million last year. The tax whammy will also see petrol and diesel costing around 3.5p a litre more, once the fuel duty increase that came in on January 1 is factored in.

Yesterday queues built up at filling stations nationwide as motorists flocked to fill their tanks. Shops urging consumers to beat the VAT rise were packed.

Chancellor George Osborne blamed massive debts left by Labour for forcing the Coalition to jack up the tax.

He said: "VAT is a powerful weapon to tackle debt and if we don't use it then the spending cuts would be over 13billion bigger."

Labour leader Ed Miliband accused the Tories and Lib Dems of a "broken promise" to peg petrol prices.

He said: "Fuel prices are now at a record high.

"And what is this Conservative-led government doing? They are putting up the duty."

Frantic shopper Abi Tucker, 22, from Kent, said in London's Oxford Street yesterday: "I made sure I got my DVD player and an MP3 player."

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