Simon Boyd, managing director of REIDsteel, said: “The Chancellor’s first budget has disaster written all over it.
“It is not a budget for growth, it is a budget for decline and she is deluded if she thinks otherwise.
“SMEs are the lifeblood of our economy, accounting for 99% of the business population according to the House of Commons library.
“By the government’s own definition, small businesses are those with less than 50 employees and medium sized firms are those with less than 250 people.
“A vast number of these businesses will be facing significant increases, not least through the double-whammy of increased employer National Insurance contributions and a cut in the threshold for payments from £9,100 to £5,000.
“Many SMEs will be wondering where they are going to find the extra money from to pay such additional taxes. Coupled with damaging measures in the Employment Rights Bill, it is nothing less than a tax on jobs.
“With all of the noise prior to her announcement, the Chancellor may have considered her maiden budget a political success with measures such as the continuation of the fuel duty freeze appearing to soften the blow for the public.
“However, it is a simple case of smoke and mirrors which cannot obscure the fact that a bad budget remains a bad budget.
“The OBR’s anaemic growth forecasts heralded by the Chancellor at the opening of her budget statement are an embarrassing admission of defeat.
“If the government is serious about economic growth, it needs to support this country’s 5.51 million SMEs and the private sector, not add to their regulatory burden and tax them further.
“Without a thriving private sector, there is no public sector. The government would do well to remember that business is a force for good, not a cash cow to be milked at its convenience.
“Following the announcement of the Employment Rights Bill, I wrote to the Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds requesting a meeting to discuss barriers to growth. It took his office a month to reply to tell me that he was too busy!”