Tom Espine and Emma Smith
BBC Business Reporters
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The Cosmetics Company Lush and the Kwik car repair chain are among the companies that have warned that they would increase prices due to an increase in national employers’ insurance (NI).
Other companies have told the BBC that they would reduce the benefits they make, the hiring of frost or, in some cases, reduced jobs to cover higher costs.
From Sunday, employers will have to pay or 15% on wages over £ 5,000, instead of 13.8% on wages greater than £ 9,100 currently.
The Treasury said that the billions raised will be spent on public services, including the NHS.
Lush told BBC that with 3,600 employees in the United Kingdom and Ireland, he should find an additional 2.7 million pounds per year.
Kasey Swithenbank, Lush retail leader for the United Kingdom and Ireland, said: “We are going to make small additional price changes. We adopt an approach where we examine certain categories at the main points of the year, so I hope that our customers do not feel the full burden.”
The boss of Kwik Fit Mark Slade said that national insurance changes will affect prices and hiring.
Kwik Fit, which employs around 7,000 people, estimates that the Nicks increases will cost him 6.4 million pounds sterling.
This will have a price and recruitment training effect, said Mark Slade, its managing director.
“We are really cautious to make sure that Kwikfit is always competitive and compared against the people around us – but reality is that it includes growing prices.”
He added: “There will be people who will not be replaced during the coming year and it will be on the upper levels.”
What are the changes?
The rate that employers pay in contributions will drop from 13.8% to 15% on the profits of a worker greater than £ 175 per week. The government expects 940,000 companies to pay more, 250,000 companies paying less and 820,000 to see no change.
BBC Breakfast contacted around 200 British companies and charitable organizations in March, in different industries, unique merchants to large companies to have an idea of the impact of the increase in national insurance contributions.
Some 121 fulfilled the questionnaire and around 100 of these companies told us that they had at least an approximate idea of the increase in increases in the employer’s nicks would cost them.
The costs varied from 1,000 to 39 million pounds sterling depending on the size of the company and the number of employees.
About 60 of companies planned to increase the number of staff members before the announcement said the budget had affected these plans.
How will companies manage the increases?
The BBC Breakfast questionnaire asked employers to choose from a list of the actions they would take to manage the increase in NICS.
77 declared that they would transmit costs to customers in Price Rises68 declared that they would freeze or reduce the recruit
Companies have most often told us that they would choose a combination of these things.
BT boss Allison Kirkby said the tax changes meant that BT accelerated the cost reduction that it was going to do anyway
Allison Kirkby, Director General of BT, said that the tax changes, which will cost the company 100 million pounds Sterling, will mean that he accelerates the job cuts that she already provided.
She added that BT is “delighted” of tax relief on the investment of infrastructure in the spring declaration and the British planning reforms.
“For the moment, like the country, we are focusing on BT’s return to growth,” she said.
“Predictability on taxation, regulation and planning is super useful for investment that goes into infrastructure like ours, which is the country’s digital backbone.”
Angela Burns says that the tax changes are “really difficult”.
Angela Burns is the director general of the webb hotel group, a group of four hotels based in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands.
It employs a little less than 300 people, and it says that the rise in nks alone will cost £ 200,000 per year, the costs of minimum wage and additional pension relating to £ 600,000.
“It’s really difficult because our workforce is the main expense of our business,” she said.
“As soon as it was announced in the budget in October, we started to look at the restructuring, and as people left, we are not employed. So we have really reduced our workforce by around 320 to around 280 now to prepare.”
She said prices should be moved “slightly up”.
“But this is an act of balance as to what customers are ready to pay,” she added.
Greg Strickland, managing director of the Trampoline activity company, Jump Xtreme in Bolton, said that the changes have added £ 30,000 in cost “overnight”.
He said it had reduced 16 hours a week of reduction on 40 -hour contracts to cover the cost.
Meanwhile, Andrew Lane, director general of Union Industries in Leeds, said that the company, which manufactured industrial doors, shares around half of its profit after tax with employees.
“It will strike them,” he said. “There will be less money to distribute to our owners of employees.”
The government has predicted that changes will increase between 14.6 billion pounds sterling and 18.3 billion pounds sterling per year over five years when the remuneration of public sector employers is taken into account.
A Treasury spokesman told the BBC that the government was “pro-business” and that she knew “the vital importance of small businesses for our economy”.
They said that the October budget “had made difficult tax decisions to stabilize public finances, including the NHS which has now seen the waiting lists fall of five consecutive months”.
They added: “We now focus on creating opportunities for companies to compete and access the funding they need to evolve, export and enter new markets.”
Additional report by Oliver Smith and Jennifer Meierhans
