No sombre music accompanied Rachel Reeves’s Budget, nor was there a reading from Corinthians. Yet, those details aside, one point is surely clear: Labour’s first Budget in 14 years was a requiem for entrepreneurial Britain. The four decades from the Thatcher reforms of the early 1980s, that turned the UK into one of the best places, at least in Europe, to start and build a company, are now officially over. Britain’s economy will be a lot poorer thanks to the Labour government.
True, the Budget might not have been quite as bad as some of the advanced speculation suggested. Even so, no one should be under any illusions.: this Budget was a full-on attack on entrepreneurs and small businesses.
The rate of Capital Gains Tax they will have to pay, even on the first £1 million they make from selling a company they have sweated blood to create, has been hiked considerably.
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