Wednesday newspaper round-up: NI hike, Amazon, Mumsnet

(Sharecast News) - Business groups reacted with dismay to the government's national insurance hike and surcharge on dividend income to boost health and social care spending from next April, calling it a tax on jobs and a blow to the economic recovery. The British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) said the extra financial burden from higher tax charges ignored the damage suffered by thousands of small businesses over the last 18 months. - Guardian Amazon's key UK business paid just £3.8m more corporation tax last year than in 2019, even as sales increased by £1.89bn. Accounts filed at Companies House this week show that the corporation tax contribution of Amazon UK Services - the group's warehouse and logistics operation, thought to employ the majority of the group's UK workforce - was £18.3m in the year to December 2020, up 26% from £14.5m a year before. - Guardian

Water companies have been allowed to cut back on sewage treatment chemicals after they became the latest victims of the UK's supply chain disruption. The Environment Agency told water companies that it was authorising "a temporary reduction in the dosage used to treat waste water". - Telegraph

Britain's best known parenting website has made its first acquisition in its 21-year history with the takeover of Mush, an app developed to help new mothers meet up in person. Mush was launched in 2016 by Katie Massie-Taylor, 38, and Sarah Hesz, 39, who met in a children's playground in Barnes, west London and came up with the idea of how to make it easier for new mothers to meet. The business was named after "what mums' brains sometimes feel like, what babies eat and an old slang term for friend". - The Times

Employers planned to make the fewest job cuts for seven years last month, suggesting that the end of the furlough scheme will not trigger a sharp rise in unemployment. Figures show that 12,687 jobs were earmarked for redundancy in August, down 11 per cent since July, according to the Insolvency Service. - The Times