Taxing the profit of an individual pub seems like a great way to reward the big chains that hide their profits better.

Pass that saving down to drinkers and do decent food and then maybe I can get on board. Creeping £7+ for a pint is hard to swallow (no pun intended) on top of everything else.

That pub in the article picture is absolutely gorgeous by the way.

I wonder why Greene king want to tax profits? It's because they don't make any.

Nope, you chose to expand beyond what you can handle. Tax the wealth, if you can't afford to run your pubs give them back to the people and pay less tax that way.

Green King's (and the other large pubco chains) business model is to trap people who think "I could run a pub" and use up their 50k retirement fund to pay the GKs mortgage for them and force them to buy their product at grossly inflated wholesale prices until the go bankrupt or realise they're in a trap and bail. Then they do it all again.

If anyone somehow manages to actually turn a profit, they find an excuse to evict the tenant and install a manager instead and extract anything of value before starting the cycle over again when it inevitably slides into unprofitability.

Of course we can't do anything about this in the short term, but long term we should be doing everything we can to fix property pricing. It's such a stranglehold on both citizens and businesses.

People can't afford to go out and spend because it's all servicing a mortgage or rent, which goes to wealthy landlords or banks, rather than circulating locally/improving government tax intake.

Businesses have to hike prices to pay for exorbitant rent rates, which further reinforces people not being able to go out and spend.

The government spends several billion per year on housing benefits, which has went from a benefit to help the few who fell through the cracks and needed a bit of assistance, to huge numbers of people completely reliant on it else they can't afford to house themselves. And who gets the money? That's right. Landlords.

We obviously can't snap our fingers and have more houses overnight, but I hope the upcoming planning reforms and mandatory building targets actually bear fruit.

I'm a home owner by the skin of my teeth (I worked 84 hour weeks, saved relentlessly - destroying my social life, and moved to the North East where housing is cheap), but I'm fine taking a hit in house value if it's for the good of the nation. Fuck the people who pulled the ladders up after them.

Oh no, greene king making less money. What a shame.

Also all that is happening is they the covid tax discount they had is being reduced from 75% to 40%. Any impact of lockdown on people going out is long gone.

We already tax profits.

So this is just a "don't tax our wealth" cry.

That and they charge £5.60 for a pint