In the Budget report, Chancellor Alistair Darling gave entrepreneurs welcome relief by extending the 10% special concession for business sales on Capital Gains Tax from £1m to £2m. The Capital Gains Tax itself remains unchanged at 18%.

Bissell told Recruiter that the main benefactors will be people selling their business for less than£2m, which he says, would benefit around 80% of recruiters currently trading in the UK. He believes that the doubling of entrepreneurs’ relief may convince them to sell.

Bissell said: “There are quite a lot of people that are thinking of retiring and would have sold their business but were prevented from doing so due to the ill effects of the recession. It will give an opportunity to those who would have sold their business anyway because the tax position is more benign than they expected it to be.

“The fear of losing almost half of what they make has now gone. The government has reduced the tax people make when they sell their business and I can’t imagine they will now put it up if they are returned to power. And I can’t imagine the Conservatives will scrap this because it encourages enterprise - for people to own and grow their business.”

CGT and the 2010 Budget
In 2008, the Chancellor reduced the rate of Capital Gains Tax from 40% to 18%. But to help entrepreneurs who wanted to sell their businesses, he provided a special concessionary rate of 10% tax on the first £1m earned from the sale.

The 2010 Budget retains the 18% Capital Gains Tax, but extends the 10% concession rate to the first £2m gained by an entrepreneur in selling their business.