Following Gordon Brown's announcement last week that he would increase corporation tax for small businesses from 19 per cent to 22 per cent, the chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has said that SMEs are the "victims" of this year's budget.
SMEs have accused the chancellor of failing to acknowledge their contribution to the economy, and instead being too keen to impress large city firms (whose corporation tax was cut in this year's budget.)
The figures spouted by Carol Lundy from the FSB at their national conference at the weekend would appear to support these allegations.
Ms Lundy explained that: "The small business sector as a whole employs over half the private sector workforce. That's 12 million workers.
"Small businesses contribute half of the UK's GDP and 60 per cent of commercial innovations."
Ms Lundy revealed that FSB now has over 200,000 members in the UK and directly represents the employers of over two and a half million people.
"Our great country is better for the work that we do," said Ms Lundy. "Let's do more of it."
