Zahawi was appointed UK Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tuesday night after his predecessor Rishi Sunak, Health Secretary Sajid Javid and eight other junior cabinet members resigned. With Boris Johnson fighting for his future as prime minister, Downing Street wants the chancellor to consider introducing tax cuts – and reversing tax rises – in a bid to win back public support despite her fragile public finances Britain. Zahawi told Times Radio on Tuesday that he could withdraw the corporate tax hike planned for the spring. “When boards invest, companies invest, they invest for the long term and compare corporate tax rates,” he said. “So I’ll look at everything.” The chancellor also told Sky News he would look at “everything” in terms of corporation tax to make the UK “as competitive as it can be”. The tax increase was designed to raise £17 billion a year to help restore public finances after the UK government borrowed hundreds of billions of pounds to get the country through the Covid-19 pandemic. It has been partially offset by an “over-discount” designed to encourage companies to increase their capital investment. Sunak said in his resignation letter that he could not agree on an economic strategy with Johnson, who is known to dislike the impending increase in business taxes. “In preparation for our proposed joint speech on the economy next week, it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally very different,” he said. A close Zahawi ally said he had taken the job out of a duty to “correct some ills” with the economy. A senior government official suggested the new chancellor would pursue a different economic strategy to Sunak: “For the next stage, we need a plan for growth, not just balancing the books.” Zahawi told Sky News on Monday that “sometimes it’s easy to walk away”. “You don’t get into this job to have an easy life,” he said. “You make difficult decisions every day.
