BKL tax partner David Whiscombe comments via the UK200Group on Next’s announcement that they may have to increase prices to take the National Living Wage (NLW) into account.
“I would have thought that the other side of the coin for retailers like Next is that the increase in NMW (NLW indeed – pure semantics!) would mean that there is more cash in the hands of punters, who might want to spend some of it on buying more of their tat. But what do I know?
More seriously, every major retailer seemed to think Sunday opening was a good thing, despite the fact that it presumably increased wage costs by something like a sixth all round. So it’s not entirely clear to me why the increase in economic activity, occasioned by the introduction of NLW, is a bad thing.”