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2026 FAMILY OWNED, PRIVATELY OWNED AND OWNER-MANAGED BUSINESS SURVEY

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How much will your salary bill increase from April 2025? Download our free Forecasting Tool

Karen Thomson

Head of Payroll - Partner

Changes announced in the 2024 Autumn Budget will significantly impact employer wage bills from April 2025. These changes include:

  • Increases in National Living/Minimum Wage rates
  • Increase in employer’s National Insurance contributions from 13.8% to 15%
  • Lowering the employer threshold for National Insurance contributions
  • Increase in the employment allowance to £10,500 per annum, with the removal of the £100,000 threshold

While the immediate impact of these changes is relatively easy to work out, they also have the potential to affect other areas of wage bills, for example, higher salaries will lead to increased employer pension contributions and may result in more employees being automatically enrolled into pension schemes. Additionally, larger employers with a pay bill exceeding £3 million will now be subject to the 0.5% apprenticeship levy.

To help you determine the anticipated cost to your business, we have a developed a free forecasting tool. To learn more and/or to download the tool, please click here.

For some businesses, an increase in wage costs will put significant pressure on day-to-day running and may impact viability.

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