Steph Chalmers

By offering employees shares that have the potential to have really high capital growth over a long period, that's a way that startups can attract talent.

They don't have the ability in the early days to offer the big salaries and compete with established firms.

if you make employee share schemes less attractive by saying you're going to face a less favourable tax treatment than you would have previously, then that could make it more difficult for start-ups to attract and retain the talent they need to grow.

So we don't exactly know what this is going to end up looking like, but on the CGT part of it at least, it looks like we will get some sort of carve-out or exemption or

different tax treatment for that sector.

And then as you say, there were these other measures.

So one which we spent quite a long time trying to get our heads around in the budget was this loss refundability measure.

So we actually had something like this first come in during COVID.

So it was called loss carryback.

So it means if a business made a tax loss in a year, they could actually

use that to offset tax they had paid in previous profitable years and, you know, get some of that tax they paid back.

So that is currently applying.

over a two-year period.

So if you paid tax in the previous two years and you then make a loss, you can get a refund of some of that tax you paid in the previous two years.

There's also been a measure specific to startups with this.

So obviously that favours businesses who made a profit previously and then make a loss.

But if you're a startup,

You might say, hey, we haven't had the chance to make a profit yet.

We don't have any tax that we paid to be refunded.

So in the budget, they specified that startups could actually get a refund on some of the other taxes they might have paid related to employment.