It was the most talked-about Budget for more than a decade before it happened and I suspect business entrepreneurs won’t stop talking about it for years to come. Chancellor Rachel Reeves told us she had to find £40 billion from additional taxes to fund a black hole she had inherited, alongside spending plans she wanted to deliver, and in the space of less than fifteen minutes of her Budget speech, she had taken it from us.

£25 billion is coming from one measure – an increase in employers’ national insurance in two parts – lowering the start point for payment and increasing the rate. The olive branch to small businesses was an increase in Employment Allowance (a grant towards your employers NI contributions), but calculations show this benefits only those businesses with less than 6-7 employees on average earnings. Any more than that and you’re worse off, potentially significantly so as an employer post-Budget.

These businesses are the lifeblood of the economy. In addition to higher NI, they face the challenges of the increase in National Living Wage and its knock-on impact to other staff salary levels. Those in hospitality have seen their rates relief heavily reduced too.
If this is a Budget for Growth, it will need to deliver, despite its impact, rather than because of it.
Eventually you’ll pay nearly twice the current level of tax

There were longer term hits too for those trying to do what the government would have them do. Build your business to the point where you can sell it and, under the old rules, you got a favourable rate of tax on cashing in your life’s work. Not from next April; instead you’ll pay increasingly more, and eventually nearly twice the current level.

Save into a private pension to take the pressure off the state scheme and you can pass it on to your children tax effectively. Not from 2027; HMRC will then take 40% of it. And the removal of full relief for handing down business assets will hurt many who expect family businesses to continue down the generations. Farmers have been very vocal in their criticism already and they have a point.

The Chancellor lived up to her party manifesto of not increasing headline taxes, if you accept that Employer NI is outside that definition. We were promised a tough Budget and we got one.