What 160+ Business Leaders Did Ahead of the Autumn Budget
In June 2026, more than 90 founders, business leaders and MPs put their names to the same letter. By 25th August, that number had grown to more than 160.
John Caudwell, who built Phones 4u, was among the latest names to join. So was Lord Stuart Rose, who used to run both Asda and M&S.
The two have spent decades at the top of British business, and now they are on the same page.
The campaign, called Stop the Creep, is run by Helm, a network for UK scale-up founders.
It is about tax on paper. But more than 160 people with different businesses, interests and opinions decided the smarter move was to stand together instead.
What “Tax Creep” Actually Means
No single tax change ever feels like a big deal on its own.
A percentage point gets shaved off here, and a relief gets quietly removed there. Add enough of those up over a few years, though, and the cost of building a business has crept up while nobody was watching.
The letter names three areas specifically: dividends, capital gains, and business assets.
If you have ever weighed up paying yourself versus reinvesting, or thought about eventually selling what you have built, you have bumped into at least one of these.
What The Letter Actually Asks For
They are asking for three things, and none of them is complicated.
Reverse the recent hike to Employers’ National Insurance.
Bring back the entrepreneurial reliefs that used to reward people for building a business and eventually selling it.
And give founders a proper long-term plan for tax, rather than a fresh surprise at every Budget.
That last one is the real ask, if you strip everything else away.
You can plan around a cost you can see coming. It is the not knowing that actually wears people down.
One Number Worth Sitting With
The Institute of Economic Affairs published its own research around the same time.
It found that, in the years following the financial crisis, the combined marginal tax rate on capital jumped by around 10 percentage points. It later fell, but has climbed sharply again. According to the IEA, there has been only one year this century when that rate was higher than it is now.
That is years of tax changes making decisions around investment, growth and taking money out of a business increasingly complicated.
So, What Then?
Did the tax letter achieve anything? Not a tax cut. Not yet, anyway.
As of 25th August, the Treasury had not publicly responded to the campaign. But something else had happened.
The original group of 90-plus supporters had grown by roughly 70 names. John Caudwell, Lord Stuart Rose and other prominent business leaders joined it. MPs backed it. And the campaign started attracting considerably more attention.
That might not be the result they ultimately want, but it is a result.
A problem that belonged to a relatively small group of founders became a much bigger conversation because more people got behind it.
The Bit That Actually Matters
None of us can control what the Budget brings on 28th October, or interest rates, or whatever the news panics about that particular week.
That part is genuinely out of your hands.
What those 160-plus business leaders understood, though, is worth borrowing.
One person complaining about tax creep gets filed away and forgotten.
More than 160 people saying the same thing becomes rather harder to ignore.
It comes down to a simpler fact: a group of minds working on the same problem tends to land on a better answer than a single person working it out alone.
How A Mastermind Group Actually Helps
The tax letter shows that a problem looks different once more than one person is looking at it.
The same idea works at a much smaller scale.
Put seven or eight business owners in a room together, each one wrestling with their own version of uncertainty, and the group tends to spot options that a single owner working alone would miss entirely.
Someone has usually already made a decision you are still weighing up.
Someone else has already asked their accountant the exact question you keep putting off.
The Takeaway
Whatever the Budget brings on 28th October, one thing will not change.
More than 160 business leaders just showed what can happen when people stop trying to tackle something entirely on their own.
Your business does not need 150 signatures to benefit from the same idea, just a handful of people willing to sit down with you regularly and think it through properly.
Come and see what that actually looks like.
Book a free virtual tour and we will show you round.
Let us know what you thought of this one. We read every single reply.
Onwards and upwards our friends,
Pete, Sarah, and the Mastermind9 team
