Warning for UK business owners ahead of the October Budget

More than 160 founders, business leaders and MPs have signed an open letter urging Chancellor John Healey to reverse tax rises on business owners before his Budget on 28 October.

Helm, a network of scale-up founders, wrote the letter and used it to launch its Stop the Creep campaign, which opened in June with more than 90 business leaders and MPs attached.

The list now runs past 160 names and includes John Caudwell, Gail’s Bakery chairman Luke Johnson, Boden founder Johnnie Boden, Reiss chief executive Christos Angelides and Thought Machine co-founder Paul Taylor.

Lord Rose of Monewden, the former chairman of Asda and Marks & Spencer, has also signed, alongside shadow cabinet MPs Andrew Griffith, Priti Patel, Chris Philp and Kevin Hollinrake.

Employers’ National Insurance and capital gains tax on dividends have gone up, while Business Asset Disposal Relief, Business Property Relief and Agricultural Property Relief have all been cut back.

Business Asset Disposal Relief, the headline relief for founders selling up, rose from 10% to 14% in April 2025 and to 18% from April 2026. “It is death by a thousand cuts,” the letter states.

The letter puts the odds facing owners in numbers. Only four in every 10 UK businesses reaches its fifth birthday, and of the five million registered companies in the UK, just 1,400 sold for more than £1 million in 2024 according to the Office for National Statistics. For the small group who reach a large sale, the letter says the resulting tax bill has nearly doubled in the last two years.

Where founders are being courted instead

The United States charges nothing on the first $10 million of a company sale, and the letter names Cyprus, Portugal, the UAE and Singapore as countries offering low-tax regimes and lighter regulation to British founders.

The government’s own advisers have warned that Britain risks becoming an incubator economy, strong at creating businesses but unable to keep them. The signatories argue the country still ranks among the most entrepreneurial on Earth and that the trend can be reversed at the Budget.

Former Chancellor Rachel Reeves told entrepreneurs in November 2025 that she wanted to make the United Kingdom the most attractive place in the world to start and scale a business, a promise the signatories say has not survived the tax changes that followed.

Healey has since promised businesses “breathing space” after the private sector absorbed a high share of the tax rises under Reeves. The campaign is pressing him to use the Budget to reverse the reliefs that have been pared back rather than add further increases.

Pressure has also come from parliamentarians outside the letter’s list of signatories. Conservative MP Julian Smith wrote this month that a Burnham government cannot deliver growth while treating the companies that employ people and pay taxes as a revenue tap, and pointed to the campaign as evidence of how far business patience has stretched.

Helm continues to collect signatures, and the coalition of founders, chief executives and MPs has grown by roughly 70 names since launch.

Britain’s next fiscal event will decide whether Business Asset Disposal Relief stays at 18% or moves again.

The Treasury has not commented on the letter.