“The tax disproportionately impacts SMBs”

Nathan Marke, Chief Strategy Officer, Giacom
Growth credentials:
Inflexion-backed cloud marketplace Giacom is looking to hit £500m revenues this year
Will the national insurance hike have any bearing on your recruitment plans?
Like any business we are held to account for hitting profit targets. We estimate that the compound effect of the % increase in employer NI and the lowering of the threshold will cost us around £1m this year. That’s a £1m hit directly to our bottom line – so of course it has an impact.
An observation I would make, and the bigger concern for us and our partners, is the indirect impact the tax is having on confidence in the SMB sector. Many larger businesses are implementing automation and AI programmes to enable them to grow without proportionately increasing overheads. The more scale you have, the more you can shield yourself from the impact. If you are a small business in the hospitality, retail or construction sector you just don’t have these options, but the tax increases will affect you in just the same way. So the tax disproportionately impacts SMBs and is affecting their confidence to invest for the future.
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