{"id":5826,"date":"2020-06-11T10:20:27","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T10:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/finance\/blog-post\/treasury-mulls-employment-allowance-boost-for-small-business-hiring\/"},"modified":"2020-06-11T10:20:27","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T10:20:27","slug":"treasury-mulls-employment-allowance-boost-for-small-business-hiring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/finance\/blog-post\/news-blog-post\/treasury-mulls-employment-allowance-boost-for-small-business-hiring\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasury mulls employment allowance boost for small business hiring"},"content":{"rendered":"<section class=\"article-content post-content\" id=\"article-content\">\n<p>Rishi Sunak is debating whether to increase the employment allowance in order to encourage Britain\u2019s 5.9m small business to take on more staff.<\/p>\n<p>\t    \t<!-- \/14181245\/TEST-INPAGE-TEXTAD_4 --><\/p>\n<div class=\"inpage-ad\" data-origid=\"4\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1498568931895-4\">\n\t\t\t<!-- CALLED --><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n\t\t\t\t\tgoogletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1498568931895-4'); });\n\t\t\t\t<\/script><!-- post CALLED -->\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>Currently, small businesses can save \u00a34,000 off their national insurance bill through the employment allowance. More than 600,000 small businesses pay nothing in national insurance contributions through the scheme.<\/p>\n<p>But the Treasury is mulling whether to increase the employment allowance much further in order to head off what has been dubbed \u201cJobpocalypse Now\u201d as workers come off furlough. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme will expire completely by end-October. The Bank of England expects unemployment to jump from <a href=\"https:\/\/smallbusiness.co.uk\/5-best-ideas-to-start-a-small-business-post-coronavirus-2550485\/\">4 per cent to 9 per cent<\/a> between April and June 2020, the highest rate since 1994 \u2013 and that is even before the furlough scheme even starts to <a href=\"https:\/\/smallbusiness.co.uk\/what-the-revamped-furlough-scheme-means-for-your-small-business-2550437\/\">wind down from August<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Separately, the Treasury is also debating whether scrap national insurance this year for small businesses, a proposal which the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.taxpayersalliance.com\/\">Taxpayers\u2019 Alliance<\/a> estimates could save or create between 595,000 and 892,000 jobs<\/p>\n<p>Tej Parikh, chief economist at the \u00adInstitute of Directors (IoD), told the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/business\/2020\/06\/06\/sunak-debating-tax-incentive-smes-boost-hiring\/\">Telegraph<\/a> that \u201cIncreasing the employment allowance would be a sensible step to take in the Budget statement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Craig Beaumont, director of external affairs at the Federation of Small Businesses, told the newspaper: \u201cWe would want any event to reduce the fixed cost of employment, that would be either through a national insurance holiday or to upgrade the employment allowance.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Economic stimulus package<\/h3>\n<p>Meanwhile, Mr Sunak and Prime Minister Boris Johnson are working on plans for an economic stimulus package, due to be unveiled in a speech from the PM later this month and in a formal statement by the chancellor on July 9.<\/p>\n<p>Proposals include a \u201cbad bank\u201d to take on the debts of companies that <a href=\"https:\/\/smallbusiness.co.uk\/half-of-bounce-back-loans-will-go-into-default-warn-banks-2550443\/\">default on bounce-back loans<\/a>, along with some kind of action on national insurance, whether it\u2019s suspending NI for small firms or increasing employment allowance.<\/p>\n<div id=\"suggestvplayer\"><\/div>\n<p><!--\n                --><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article-intro secondary-text-colour\">Increasing employment allowance would encourage small businesses to take on more staff, Treasury believes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sloane.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}