Over 90 business leaders and MPs have signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to stop the creep of taxes on Britain’s entrepreneurs.
Signatories include Luke Johnson, Chairman of Gail’s Bakery, Johnnie Boden, Founder of Boden, Marcel Khan, CEO of Franco Manca and The Real Greek, and Andreas Adamides, CEO of Helm.
Priti Patel, Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Andrew Griffith, Shadow Secretary for Business & Trade, and Chris Philp, Shadow Home Secretary are also among the 19 MP signatories.
The letter is written by Helm, Britain’s largest network of scale-up founders, and marks the beginning of its Stop the Creep campaign.
In November 2025, the Chancellor pledged to make the United Kingdom the most attractive place in the world for founders to start and scale a business. Signatories say the opposite is happening.
The letter warns of a “death by a thousand cuts” – Employers’ National Insurance and Capital Gains Tax is up, while Business Asset Disposal Relief, Business Property Relief and Agricultural Property Relief have all been cut.
It argues that while Britain “tightens the screws” on its founders, other nations are “rolling out the red carpet”. The United States offers zero tax on the first $10 million of a company sale, while Cyprus, Portugal, the UAE and Singapore are all actively “wooing Britain’s founders with low-tax regimes and pro-growth regulation.”
The letter calls on the Chancellor to stop the creep before Britain loses its founders for good.
Andreas Adamides, CEO of Helm, said: “Britain’s founders take the risks, forgo the salaries and create the jobs that power our economy. Yet the tax system is telling them to leave. The relentless creep of taxes on those who scale businesses is corrosive, and it sends exactly the wrong signal to the people we most need to back.
“The Government promised to make the UK the best place in the world to build a business. I want to believe that promise. But warm words won’t keep founders here, only action will.”