Treasury to offer tax cuts for entrepreneurs

Chancellor Gordon Brown has announced that the Treasury will offer tax cuts to entrepreneurs who wish to start their own businesses or become self-employed as part of the Government's 'business-friendly' pre-election campaign trail.

Speaking of the proposals in Swindon, Gordon Brown said, "Our ambition for Britain is not just to reinvigorate the work ethic in communities where it was destroyed, but to build a British enterprise culture where the chance of starting a business or being self-employed - once confined to the few - is genuinely open to all."

Joining the Chancellor in his announcement were Employment Minister - Tessa Jowell and Trade and Industry Secretary Stephen Byers who last week promised that the Government would:

• introduce tax measures to encourage business creation;
  
• extend tax credits to larger firms for research and development;
  
• establish an independent competition commission to decide on mergers;
  
• reform planning laws to make business development decisions faster and easier;
  
• give more support to regional development agencies;
  
• refashion the New Deal to tackle skills shortages in IT, retail,
  construction, finance and hospitality;
  
• turn inner cities and derelict industrial sites into 'communities of enterprise' through cuts in stamp duty, tax credits for investment and cuts in VAT on property conversions.

Gordon Brown also announced preliminary plans to slash the rate of tax for small business in half, from 20p to 10p.

He added, "Changing our culture to one that favours enterprise in every area requires more than tax incentives - it demands a real shift in attitudes. And that effort must begin not in the boardroom, but in Britain's classrooms."

To ensure the attitude shift, the Government says it will "double the number of enterprise courses in schools, encourage business secondment and new business ambassadors and work experience for every child, linking schools to the workplace."

Trade and Industry Secretary Stephen Byers said that for every day Labour had been in power, 100 new businesses had been started.