Just in case you were wondering what was in the Budget last week for small businesses, we have reproduced below the comments made by George Osborne and posted to the GOV.UK website:

Backing business and creating opportunity

This Budget backs business and enterprise to drive up productivity growth and create job opportunities. This Budget continues to lower taxes, with new support for small business and entrepreneurs, while also modernising the tax system and taking steps to ensure that taxes are fair and are paid.

The government will:

  • cut the rate of corporation tax to 17% in 2020, benefiting over one million companies, large and small
  • cut business rates for all properties in England, with 600,000 small firms paying no rates so that the business rates burden will fall by £6.7 billion over the next five years
  • cut the higher rate of Capital Gains Tax from 28% to 20% and the basic rate from 18% to 10% from April 2016 (except for residential property and carried interest), and extend entrepreneurs’ relief to long term investors in unlisted companies
  • cut National Insurance contributions for 3.4 million self-employed people, by abolishing Class 2 National Insurance
  • modernise the corporation tax rules on losses, making the system more flexible for businesses while ensuring that companies making large profits pay tax on these, and further restricting banks’ use of their historic losses
  • reform Stamp Duty Land Tax on non-residential property transactions, cutting the tax for many small businesses purchasing property, with over 90% of non-residential transactions paying the same or less
  • abolish the bureaucratic and burdensome Carbon Reduction Commitment energy efficiency scheme and replace it, in a revenue neutral way, with an increase in the Climate Change Levy from 2019
  • support the oil and gas industry by permanently zero-rating Petroleum Revenue Tax, reducing the Supplementary Charge from 20% to 10% and introducing targeted measures to encourage investment in exploration, infrastructure and late-life assets
  • give large companies more time to prepare for a new corporation tax payments schedule, with a broadly neutral impact on the public finances