A Tesco tax won’t help anyone

Britain's high streets are already places nobody wants to go to, says Matthew Lynn. Higher taxes will only make them less appealing.

It was probably the last thing Dave Lewis, Tesco's new chief executive, wanted to read about. As soon as his appointment was announced, the papers were suddenly filled with headlines about a Tesco tax'.

In fact, the proposed Tesco tax is not a special one-off levy on grocers who expanded too ambitiously overseas, and built too many drab sheds filled with rather mediocre stuff that was a bit more expensive than it really should have been.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.