Since the election, businesses have come under repeated attack from the most-anti business chancellor this country has seen in decades.
Rachel Reeves has increased the employer national insurance contributions as well as lowering the threshold at which it is paid, and according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies each full time employee on the minimum wage will now cost an extra £770 in NI alone.
In addition, government has business rate relief introduced by Rishi Sunak during the pandemic, from 75 per cent to 40 per cent, doubling the cost for many businesses.
These actions will see businesses close, job losses and in turn less receipts for the exchequer to help fund public services.
Family businesses also face further worry after government announced it would end the current 100 per cent exemption (for qualifying business) from inheritance tax.
Business Property Relief was introduced nearly 50 years ago to protect family-owned and across Tatton we have family businesses that go back four or five generations.
One local business founded in the 1800s, told me their businesses survived two world wars, the Spanish flu, the high tax and economic lunacy of the 1970s, and even the recent covid lockdowns but the Chancellor’s Budget is the “fatal blow” and will be the death of them.
Family businesses employ 14 million people and add £575 billion to the economy. Families have ploughed huge sums of money into their businesses, invested in assets to build - what they thought - was security to pass on to future generations, their staff and local community. They now face the extremely difficult decision whether to sell the business or reduce it in size, a business that has been in their family for generations.
Everything this government has done since it came to power shows it has no understanding of how business works. I want to do everything possible to support local business and see them thrive, but Labour seems intent on destroying them.
