Information provided by the Office for National Statistics has revealed that the number of UK businesses registering for VAT and PAYE dropped by over 40,000. This is probably a result of a number of issues (I presume):
- covid fall out
- cost of living crises
- Brexit
- possibly HMRC slow processing and fraudulent registrations crackdown
This is the first drop in registrations since 2011 with the current number being 2.7 million. The most likely business to deregister are sole proprietors and other small businesses. The most negatively affected trade sectors were transport and storage, IT and the sciences.