Starting and selling a business
Complex economic outlook
Anyone contemplating starting a new business, especially a bricks and mortar one, needs to factor in current economic conditions. The UK economy is expected to grow by around 1% during 2025, with improved growth of 1.9% for 2026. However, there is likely to be considerable fallout from uncertainty around the sweeping range of tariffs recently imposed by the United States, so actual UK economic growth could be somewhat lower. Inflation has now gone back up to 2.8% (April 2025), having briefly dipped below the 2% target.
The forecast for 2025 as a whole doesn’t show any improvement. Then there is the impact of the October 2024 Budget which – from April 2025 – means substantial increases for employee costs. An additional cost facing many businesses in England is the more than doubling of business rates bills due to the 75% discount for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses being reduced to just 40% for 2025/26. So, 60% of the full bill is now payable, rather than 25%.
When it comes to selling a business, it doesn’t matter whether you are developing a business idea to quickly cash in before starting all over again (the typical serial entrepreneur), planning a smart career move (with the successful sale of a self-started business looking very good on your resum.) or are in for the long haul – planning your exit strategy at an early stage will ensure you don’t pay more tax than necessary. This might be just the time to do that planning, especially as the rate of CGT payable where business asset disposal relief is available is going to increase by 4% from next April.
