Trade bodies back #KeepVATat5
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UK - Leading trade associations have backed a campaign to keep UK’s VAT rate on ticket sales at 5% to aid the live events sector’s recovery. Last July, the government temporarily slashed the VAT rate to 5% from the standard rate of 20% to support businesses severely affected by the pandemic. The cut currently applies until 31 March 2021. #KeepVATat5, initiated by LIVE (Live music Industry Venues & Entertainment), aims to convince the Treasury to extend the VAT rate cut for the next three years and comes ahead of chancellor Rishi Sunak’s hotly-anticipated budget announcement on 3 March.
More than a dozen MPs and over 100 event industry executives have signed a letter to the chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak, copying in prime minister Boris Johnson, calling for him to implement a Government-backed insurance scheme for festival, live music and events or face them disappearing from our fields and cities for good.
The letter, written by DCMS Committee chair Julian Knight MP, follows the 5 January opening hearing of the Committee’s inquiry into the future of UK music festivals, during which festival operators emphasised the urgent need for Government support.
At a crucial point in festival planning schedules, MPs warn that organisers and investors are unable to risk repeating losses sustained in 2020 unless events can be insured against cancellation.
Calls for insurance scheme intensify in industry letter
Thursday, 7 January 2021
A number of MPs and live event specialists have signed an open letter to Rishi Sunak in a bid to save summer events and more (Photo: Hanny Naibaho)
UK - The live events industry has launched a fresh appeal for a government-backed COVID-19 insurance scheme with a letter signed by 120 sector representatives and MPs. In the letter, written by the chair of the DCMS committee Julian Knight and addressed to the chancellor Rishi Sunak, the sector - which has largely been shut down since March 2020 - warns that “[w]ithout insurance, the events we know and love simply won’t take place this year - vaccine or no vaccine”. “Sustaining losses like those we’ve seen in 2020 for another year isn’t an option, and hundreds of businesses in the events supply chain have already been forced to fold,” the letter continues. “The Government has backed insurance for the film and television industry to the
By: Andy Gensler
2020 will forever have a huge, indelible asterisk beside it. It will serve as a stark reminder that the most challenging year our industry has ever endured was an anomaly, an aberration, a pox on our businesses, one that deviated widely from all norms and can’t end fast enough.
Congratulations to Sir Elton John, whose phenomenal “Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour” crowned
Pollstar’s Year-End Top 100 Worldwide Tours with $87.1 million grossed from Nov. 30 to March 7. His multi-year trek, which was No. 2 on 2019’s tally with a $212 million gross, is shaping up into something special and will further burnish Sir Elton’s incredible legacy as it continues into 2023. And kudos, too, to the rest of the chart’s Top 10, rounded out by Celine Dion, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, U2, Queen + Adam Lambert, Post Malone, Eagles, Jonas Brothers, Dead & Company and Andrea Bocelli – but for one thing: 2020 .