Budget Response: Small Businesses

Robert Graves, Rowanmoor Pensions responds to the 2010 Budget announcement on helping small businesses:

“We applaud the Chancellor for taking steps to make credit more freely available to small business owners and to entrepreneurs. However we all know that in reality these noises have been made before without any effective help trickling down to the business owners that really need it. Today’s announcement that there will be a fast-track credit complaints adjudication process put in place for SMEs just goes to show the extent of the problem.

“Small businesses often avoid pension planning as it is seen as tying up capital that may be needed at a later date. However, the Small Self-Administered Scheme (SSAS) pension product allows businesses to borrow from their pension funds should they have a legitimate business need to, effectively becoming their own source of credit and not have to rely on the banks nor an adjudication process.

“We encourage small businesses to consider the SSAS scheme as not only a method of providing a retirement planning vehicle for the directors but as an effective means of supporting their businesses.”