Corporate taxation affects business investments and, consequently, both UK’s productivity and international competitiveness. UK business investments depend on the spread between the UK corporate tax rate and the corporate tax rate in the rest of the world. At 19%, currently, the UK corporation tax is well below the OECD average of 23.39% (https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=Table_II1). From my econometric calculations, an increase in the UK corporate tax rate by six percentage points (assuming no change in the corporation tax for the rest of the world) will reduce UK business investments by a massive 16.8% in the (medium to) long run. This will apply to the larger 10% firms in the UK so the long-run negative impact of business investments will not be as bad as initially feared. That said, the problem is here is that the larger firms are, in fact, the ones most likely to invest. On the other hand, the rest of the world will also have to raise its corporation tax to tackle the rising COVID-19 debt. Put everything together to conclude that international competitiveness will face (through the hit in business investments) a moderate damage in the medium run.