Osborne: 2014 Budget 'will help small business'
The Chancellor has told small business leaders that the Budget will address their concerns and problems.
Speaking at the
Federation of Small Businesspolicy conference in London, George Osborne said the timing of the event, "with a budget in a couple of months time", the Treasury is "hungry for your ideas about what we can do to help small businesses".
"What more the goverment could be doing to support you?"
Osborne pledged to "sit down and talk about that Budget" with FSB leaders.
"My father and my mother separately built businesses," he said.
"They would often look at the television and think the debate going on in politics was very far removed from their experience of running a business.
"What I want to do is make sure we are connecting with your real needs."
He added:
"We have put our chips on a private sector recovery, on a business-led recovery we did not think the answer was to borrow our way out of the problem nor did we engage in an anti-business rhetoric."
The Chancellor highlighted decisions already taken to help small business, such as a cut small companies rate, a freese fuel duty for the whole of this parliament and annual investment allowances increased ten fold."
"We have taken a big step this April with the employment allowance," he said.
From April 2014 it will give businesses and charities a £2,000 tax cut off their national insurance contributions bill.
Osborne said it will "take 400,000 small bsuiness out of employer national insurance".
"We are very much in listening mode. We are hungry for your ideas about what we can do to help small businesses."
