Possibly a stupid question about wages and Big Business
 

Quite a few of my relatives run small businesses, so I know that staff wages are tax deductible. As all of their employees and contractors are "Skilled" they get paid properly, I might add.

As wages are deductible, why do Big Businesses pay such **** wages to their staff? What have they to lose by at least meeting the living wage?

I'm not a businesss-minded person, so there's probably something obvious I'm missing :joker:

you only pay tax on profits, the lower your wage bill, the higher your profit

Shareholder profits uber alles.

Is Oliver starting to turn into a comrade?

Again maybe I'm being dense, but surely it would cancel itself out?

Haha! I've not "identified" as right wing in absolutely ages, years in fact. I don't feel like part of any political movement or side tbh.

If you look at the sectors with the most people on minimum wage - retail and hospitality mainly - they actually run on pretty small profit margins and wages are their biggest expense and the thing they actually have the most control over so its in their interests to keep it low. Hence in the last few years they've also cut the number of jobs massively where technology can make things more efficient. Obviously if they do pay their lowest earners more they have to pay everyone above them more as well so the knock on effect on the wage bill is a big one

The Tories are doing an excellent job at pushing the Centralist left. As much as both sides detest the revolting Centralist, their is more and more of us, and the vote could tip either way depending on how they vote.

Centre always seems like a sensible place to me, neither side can be right about all issues everytime imo [emoji2368]