Mr David Fassbender is managing director of ICC Venture Capital. His priorities were measures to maintain business confidence in the light of inflation, labour costs and edginess over the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness. "In an overall sense, he's broadly got it right," he said. "There was a feeling that maybe VAT might have come down a bit more because there is a lot of focus on the opportunities in this country on e-commerce and the VAT rate we have here vis-a-vis the UK and elsewhere is relevant from the point of view of developing that business."
Mr Fassbender was supportive of the introduction of savings schemes, which he said would negate any inflationary aspects of tax cuts.
"I thought there would be more detail on them," said Mr Fassbender. "I would hope that in the Finance Bill there will be attractive schemes to encourage people to park an amount of their extra income because, apart from encouraging people to save, it would be a good thing for an amount of extra disposable income to be taken out of the system."
Mr Fassbender said he would welcome some form of initiative on tax on share option and profit sharing schemes. "There still is a problem that when people exercise share options, they are assessed at income tax rates."