Chancellor waives VAT on Jo Cox charity single
VAT on sales of the Christmas single in memory of late MP Jo Cox will be donated to charity, the Chancellor has announced.
The special recording of The Rolling Stones’ hit You Can’t Always Get What You Want, which is due out on Friday, features cross party MPs and musicians including Kaiser Chiefs’ frontman Ricky Wilson, Cockney Rebel’s Steve Harley, KT Tunstall and David Gray. Members of parliamentary rock group MP4 and the Royal Opera House Thurrock Community Chorus also feature on the track.
Money raised from the single will go to the Jo Cox Foundation which supports a range of charities, including the Royal Voluntary Service and White Helmets. In memory of the late MP and in support of the tremendous work she undertook to back good causes, the government will make a charitable donation equivalent to the VAT payable on the sales of the single to the Foundation.
Speaking at the Treasury Select Committee, the Chancellor, Philip Hammond said:
Jo Cox dedicated so much of her life to helping people less fortunate than herself and the charity named in her honour is carrying on that excellent work. It is only right that we do what we can to support that work and I am pleased to confirm that every single penny of sales from this single will go towards the good causes the Jo Cox Foundation supports.
The government has previously waived the VAT on the X Factor winner’s Christmas single, Save the Children single, Band Aid Ebola single, 2011’s Military Wives Choir single, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake appeal single.