Labour has proved yet again that it hates employers/business.

[Batmanisaplaceinturkey]

Don't be surprised when your local pubs, restaurants, hairdressers etc close up shop.
Don't be surprised if your employer can't fund your next payrise, because their NI bill has increased. Workers will indirectly pay for these increases; employers don't have magic money trees.
I work for an employer that has charitable status. We work to improve the lives of others but now have to look at reducing headcount. Employers are not all fat cats driving Mercs.
BTW, I hate the Tories. This post does not make me a Tory before anyone starts that one.

Well that's ok then, soon all the workers in those industries won't be able to afford their rent, mortgage or food when the businesses close, let alone luxuries.

Whether you can afford them or not is irrelevant surely, is it OK that they go bust and lay all those people off?

To be fair, a lot of large farms are very wildlife conscious now. We cannot say all large farming operations are poor. However in my area, a single small farmhouse will be upwards of £500,000. A second house on the farm and it’s £1m immediately. Land prices are high but profits are not great so ability to pay is not there. Selling up is the only answer unless the farm can be given to the next generation. I assume the 7 year rule applies.

It’s often forgotten that business owners take risks when running a business. They do worry about paying staff and costs. It’s their responsibility to generate business and grow the business so employees are looked after. Having to pay a lot more means they must increase profits and that’s very hard at the moment. Anyone running a profitable business that makes money and employs people should not have to pay more tax right now if we want growth. The budget will not generate growth. IFS says not much will change.

Yes. And I've seen lots of waste and inefficiency. Eventually everyone will be employed by the NHS. It's a monolith. It's unsustainable.

It was a pretty painful budget for many businesses. I work for a regional charity- about 300+ odd staff. The NI cost will be extremely difficult to overcome, the solution will be a leaner workforce, and less charitable activity output, more that raises revenue. We prob won't do redundancies but vacancies will not be filled and an over-stretched workforce will suffer, and prices in the revenue streams we have will go up. Back of fag paper I think we're talking £250k+ that will not go to direct charitable output now.

But it was always going to be a difficult budget and Labour have kept their pledge about personal taxes. The money had to come from somewhere.

Personally I'd rather a bigger slice of personal tax at the top, something around dividend rates perhaps. But it's a hugely complicated picture - punish workers and you don't win elections, punish investors and you don't get the growth...

This. It's hugely risky starting a business and plenty of small businesses fail. It's not at all uncommon for small businesses to run at a loss for several years (particularly in the early years but not exclusively). It seems very short sighted to be taking measures that will stifle their growth

It's also a bit silly to say larger businesses are rolling in it and can easily afford it... on paper maybe yes, but it must be obvious to everybody surely, that they will therefore make cuts elsewhere. I can imagine the company I work for will today be looking at how to reduce headcount in the UK, build up our smaller (but growing), less qualified overseas team, and after a tough year we'd already been warned there was little chance of payrises this year.

Do people really think larger businesses will just pay the increased bill and that there will be no impact on the people who work there, or would like to?

I'm not even disagreeing with the overall principle as such, more pointing out that across large and small businesses, they're will be fewer jobs, therefore higher unemployment.

Perhaps you should try and enlighten yourself- try reading the quality financial press or talking to those who actually run businesses larger than 4 people. Then again, you sound so blinkered I doubt you’d change your mind.

Lets not forget what Boris said about businesses, shall we?

The most damaging thing that has happened to businesses by a long way was Brexit, and that was done by a Tory government.

"2.1 million of the 2.7 million businesses In the UK have 4 or fewer employees."

Today, every time you have contact with a business, roughly calculate how many employees they have.

Drop child to nursery... nursery has 10 employees.
Go to work, how many employees in your company?
Pop to shop to get lunch... is shop independent, or a chain, so just a few employees, or lots?
Fill car with fuel, independent filling station or corporate?
Meet friend for coffee at small independent coffee shop, but they have recently opened their third outlet... number of employees?

Out of the business you interact with today, how many have 4 or less employees? One, maybe two, but I suspect most will have more.

The NMW increase will have a huge effect on the pre school I look after. We have always tried to increase wages across the board with the NMW increases, we have never been able to do this to the same level but another big rise from April will be extremely difficult unless NEG increases appropriately. We are a community pre school in a church hall, rent has gone up massively and we can only pass on small increases to those paying for extra hours as they simply can't afford it.

The employment allowance will mean we may slightly less NI I think, I haven't looked at the numbers. We have loads of part time/term time staff so NMW affects us more. We don't actually have anyone on NMW but an 80p increase means that all wages need to increase by a lot.

It also seems extraordinary to be discouraging these very small companies from growing and taking on more staff.

Yes I could base it on antidote but I would rather rely on official statistics from the Interdepartmental Business Register. Many of these employees will be part time, you need to consider FTE jobs.

Income tax for higher earners, higher tax for the biggest businesses earning millions in profits. Not medium businesses that will now go bust.

There are so many things I think could have been done really.

It just makes me laugh that we kept hearing you won't see changes on your payslip, well it'll be a massive bloody change when DH won't be receiving a payslip at all this time next year!

They're not doing it because they" hate" employers.

I think people are concerned about unintended consequences, not this kind of rubbish

Conservative HQ are out in force today! They Tories put through the 10% increase in minimum wage last year. If that didn't kill business a 1.2% increase in NI won't.

Even Reeves knows this, but clearly doesn't care. She's deluded herself into thinking this is the best way.
Also, why has the fiasco with Lord Ali not been investigated? Is he having a say in their policies after effectively bribing them? Does he have a motive?

I'm not a conservative, not even from the Uk. I'm shocked by the lack of understanding on how this will effectively affect people's livelihoods negatively regardless of whether they work for a big company or not.

Labour are out in force today with these posts

This is such a lazy response.

I’ve never voted conservative and I’m strongly in favour of higher taxes. But this was not the way to do it. It’s a sop: it’s an exercise in avoiding upsetting the majority (employees) whilst protecting the powerful (the very wealthy) whilst making all our lives more depressing in parallel.

And with labour I have a bit more confidence that the money will be used to make change rather than lining a Tory mucker's pocket!

Have they outlined a workable plan to reform the NHS or are they just pouring taxpayers' money into a black hole?

KS had years in opposition to impress us with his better ideas.

I am politically homeless before anyone starts.

I traditionally was a conservative voter. I voted lib dem this time due to the sheer incompetence of the last government. I don't see anything in this budget that is more "business hating" than the government that pushed through brexit.

But why make it a comparative analysis? It can standalone as a poor budget.

this government had the opportunity to radically change taxation in this country but they shafted the middle to appease the wealthy. It’s cowardly,

That’s the part that confused me. One allowance going from 9k to 5k but another rising from 5 to 10k?

Is the 10k on total employees?!

I guess it will be the larger nurseries who struggle then. I’ve seen some saying this will force closures so it panicked me about our preschool.