POLICY PLEDGES:
- We will support SMEs with favourable tax changes – reducing the SME corporation tax rate to 15%, raising the dividend threshold, reducing the National Insurance burden, expanding the annual investment allowance, and reducing excessive business rates back to their historic levels.
- We will improve SME access to capital via the British Business Bank (BBB), with a priority focus on deprived regions of the UK. The BBB will partner with UK private finance and pension funds to increase funding options for SMEs.
- We will make government resources for SMEs simpler and more accessible with an intelligent one-stop portal, so that businesses can access information efficiently on tenders, funding, regulations, taxes, and exporting, funded in part by abolishing the quango of the Small Business Commissioner.
- We will audit and reduce administrative burdens and barriers to trade for SMEs and will make more regulatory compliance paperless. IR35 rules on self-employment will also be streamlined.
- We will reform the apprenticeship levy to allow SMEs to use funds more flexibly within the business. To encourage the self-employed to upskill, we will provide training tax credits, with more relief for those with lower qualifications.
- Those on Universal Credit who take up self-employment will be shielded from the ‘minimum income floor’ for 24 months, to build confidence.
- To support sole traders with families we will raise the UK’s tax-free childcare allowance, extend the scheme to small businesses, and increase Maternity Allowance for the self-employed in the first six weeks.
- Levies penalising late payment to SMEs will be increased.
