Daily Telegraph: "The UK is becoming a tax haven for multi-nationals at the expense of domestic shopkeepers." (Just 'becoming'?)

"Business rates, combined with a collapse in retail demand, are daily wiping out communities, retailers, investors and pensions"

Link to web site

"As a self-employed businessman, from generations of entrepreneurs, I am used to being taxed 'till the pips squeak' as a British Chancellor once proudly boasted.

"But even I have never come across such an iniquitous tax as business rates, paid at excruciating and ever-increasing levels on premises which are declining in value, on premises which produce no income at all, and which in my case has seen my income decline by 60pc while my tax has risen by 60pc. I am typical of businesses in the North - or indeed in regions outside London and the South East.

"Businesses have contracted, their employees have been sacked, their returns have fallen off a cliff - but the business rates on their premises have continued to rise as the politicians who presided over the financial collapse force the innocent to pay for their failures.

"Nowhere is the devastation greater than on the High Street where business rates are destroying shop keepers and landlords and the savings of those who have invested in their local communities. The solution to the crisis cannot wait for an overall review of business taxation."