Sainsbury’s & BT Warn of Price Hikes After Budget Raises Employer Taxes
- Sainsbury’s CEO says National Insurance hike will cost the supermarket £140m, impacting food prices
- BT anticipates raising broadband prices to offset a £100m budget hit
- Other major retailers like Wetherspoons and Marks & Spencer also facing higher costs
Following the recent Budget, shoppers could see price hikes at supermarkets and on their broadband bills. Sainsbury’s CEO, Simon Roberts, warned that increased National Insurance costs would add £140 million to the retailer’s expenses, making it challenging to absorb these costs without raising prices. He warns that shoppers may face price hikes on groceries.
BT also announced plans to adjust broadband pricing to address £100 million in additional expenses.
Retailers across the board, including Marks & Spencer and Wetherspoons, are anticipating significant financial impacts. Sainsbury’s, facing a £500 million annual business rates bill, continues to call for reform to reduce costs for retailers. Meanwhile, BT’s CEO, Allison Kirkby, indicated that the telecom giant may pass on the new costs to consumers, especially as it continues its broadband infrastructure investment.
Tom Church, Co-Founder of LatestDeals.co.uk, commented, “Shoppers are likely to feel the pinch as retailers and service providers try to manage these increased costs from the Budget. For households, every increase in food and utility costs has a real impact, especially as we head into the winter months.
It was a pretty terrible budget with all the wrong ideas in my opinion but not much different to the past tory budgets though. I still say increasing VAT on certain products is the way to go, reduce imports, make repairing products cheaper and start reducing our trade deficit. VAT is where they should have increased tax to slow imports on certain damaging products that are mainly imported. There sadly was nothing clever about the budget it doesn't solve anything it is just micromanaging failure. The last thing we need to do is raise costs to British employers we need to make them more competitive and lower their costs.
I have such a low opinion of both Labour and Conservative politicians in fact all politicians really. None of them know what they are doing and have policies to repair the UK economy. We face further years in decline it seems.
These new costs announced in the latest budget will hit most employers so inevitably they will pass this onto their consumers.