The Chancellor’s Budget announced earlier this week by Philip Hammond has promised an ‘end to austerity’ for Britain. With numerous policies to help first-time buyers, lower incomes and housing, we look at how the new Budget will impact the SME marketing in the UK.
A significant change will be the Chancellor’s attempt to help fledging high-street businesses, who have certainly felt the pinch over the last year, with noticeable casualties such as House of Fraser, BHS, Byron Burger and Jamie’s Italian.
In a move to better the current situation for high street businesses, Hammond has pledged to cut business rates by a third for all retailers with a rateable value of £51,000 or less for the next two years. This will help retailers save up to £8,000 per year and that includes high street shops, pubs, restaurants, cafes and other small business owners that are losing ground online.
A further £675m has been assigned as a Future High Streets Fund, to aid the transformation of the UK’s high streets, to improve footfall and regenerate areas in need of redevelopment.
For entrepreneurs, the start-up loan scheme originally founded by Rt Hon David Cameron will be backing a further 10,000 new businesses – this includes seed funding, start-up capital, merchant loans and business finance. A further £200m has been put aside by the British Business Bank to replace funding which they are likely to lose from the EU following the Brexit deadline in March 2019.
For SMEs that take on apprentices, the training bill will be reduced from 10% to 5%, and the government will pay the remaining 95%. Those apprentices aged 16 to 18 and working in companies of less than 50 will continue to have their training full funded.
Losing out from the Budget will be the powerhouse tech companies who started abroad but operate in the UK and use schemes to avoid paying tax. Pointing out the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon, the tax will be imposed on those firms with a global revenue of £500 a year and the increase in tax will put £400 million back in the UK government, when it comes into place in April 2020.
Elsewhere, a scheme has been planned to offer interest free loans those struggling with debt caused by high cost credit – relating specifically to unauthorised overdrafts, rent to buy and payday products. This will be based on a consumer level and not impact businesses or sole traders using guarantor, personal or bridging loan products.
UK roads and infrastructure are expected to get a huge boost at just under £30bn in investment and first time buyers in shared ownership schemes will have their stamp duty scrapped – giving them a saving of £10,000.