The hope is that when generous tax breaks become available for new investors on November 19th, investment will start to pour in
More than 5,000 tax-advantaged zones are dotted around the world, with varying incentives and eligibility rules. Britain’s freeports will offer simpler customs procedures as well as relief from stamp duty, employer payroll taxes, business rates and corporation tax. Politicians hope all this will support innovation, trade and, in the inequality-slaying phrase of the moment, “levelling up”.
Britain’s experiences with place-based policies have been disappointing. Last month the Office for Budget Responsibility , a government watchdog, pointed out that an older policy of enterprise zones, which offered tax breaks for investors in struggling places, cost around a quarter as much as expected, which suggests that it had “smaller impacts than initially hoped”.
The question, then, is how much of this activity would have happened anyway, either in freeports or elsewhere in Britain. In time Tilbury port would have expanded to serve the hungry London market. There are plans for education projects, both to develop locals’ skills and to persuade youngsters that working in logistics really is attractive. But the second of those sits uncomfortably with the notion that freeports will absorb labour that would otherwise have sat idle.
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