Serena Humphrey almost didn't earn anything in her business from September to December last year. She feels so strongly against the new dividend tax changes coming into force this year, that she spent most of that time setting up a petition to have it debated in Parliament.
The petition, which we wrote about on BusinessZone last year, has just five weeks left to get a further 55,000 signatures before it can be debated.
Not even Humphrey's local Nottingham MP and minister for small businesses, Anna Soubry, has responded to or engaged with the campaign, despite multiple attempts at trying to contact her, both locally and online.
Humphrey is concerned at the lack of knowledge from businesses about the changes, as well as accountants, small business lobby bodies and the government's lack of action to do anything about it.
'The challenge has been that I'm one person on my own in Nottingham. I have no budget, but I do now have a team of 12 volunteers - including PR experts and other small business owners - around me now which is great.
'But trying to reach business owners is so difficult and all the bodies who claim to represent them aren't doing anything,' she told UKBF.
Humphrey runs her own small business, The F Word. She's lobbying the dividend tax as part of her Survive & Succeed campaign, which seeks to educate small businesses about good financial management and help the issue of high rate of small business failures before their first five years.
''When this dividend tax was announced, I thought, I have to do something about this. I can't just sit here and complain about it and know it's going to damage so many companies and not even try to do something. I took it on myself to start the campaign,' she says.
The 'reality' that many business owners are doing what they love and just manage to get by, as well as that 60% fail by their 5th birthday means taxing an extra 7.5% of tax will mean they become more vulnerable, Humphrey tells us.
'No one pays our pension for us, so for me it's the difference between my marketing budget or my pension. I have to make a choice next year, I can't have both because of how much tax is going to be taken out of my business,' she added.
In addition to the dividend tax, this year small businesses will have to grapple with auto enrolment, the National Living Wage and costs in general increasing, as well as ongoing economic uncertainty.
Humphrey feels that those closest to small businesses, including accountants, should be doing more than sleepwalking straight into the tax. She's concerned that the petition isn't going to reach Parliament because not enough businesses even know about it.
'The accountants have done very little about this. All they're saying is, there's a new tax coming, you've got to pay it, come and talk to us. Very few accountants are going, 'oh my God there's a petition, you should all sign it'.'
'A few have really jumped on it and have been very proactive with their clients. Most accountants are going, this could really help my clients, they're just sleepwalking into it and sleepwalking clients into it as well,' she says.
'There's a lot of cheerleading about business startups and it's all 'amazing, fantastic' and it is amazing but it's also really hard work, lonely and there are very low times as wella s the highs. People need a more balanced, realistic view of what running a business is really like.
'Most accountants talk at small companies in jargon, this barrier builds up where they just don't understand their finances so they kind of just retreat from it. They often don't learn important things like the basics of how to manage cash,' she tells UKBF.
There's just over four weeks left to sign the online petition if you feel the same way about the dividend tax, and you can do so here.
To comment on this article, please make sure you're logged in or signed up to UKBF!
The petition, which we wrote about on BusinessZone last year, has just five weeks left to get a further 55,000 signatures before it can be debated.
Not even Humphrey's local Nottingham MP and minister for small businesses, Anna Soubry, has responded to or engaged with the campaign, despite multiple attempts at trying to contact her, both locally and online.
Humphrey is concerned at the lack of knowledge from businesses about the changes, as well as accountants, small business lobby bodies and the government's lack of action to do anything about it.
'The challenge has been that I'm one person on my own in Nottingham. I have no budget, but I do now have a team of 12 volunteers - including PR experts and other small business owners - around me now which is great.
'But trying to reach business owners is so difficult and all the bodies who claim to represent them aren't doing anything,' she told UKBF.
Humphrey runs her own small business, The F Word. She's lobbying the dividend tax as part of her Survive & Succeed campaign, which seeks to educate small businesses about good financial management and help the issue of high rate of small business failures before their first five years.
''When this dividend tax was announced, I thought, I have to do something about this. I can't just sit here and complain about it and know it's going to damage so many companies and not even try to do something. I took it on myself to start the campaign,' she says.
The 'reality' that many business owners are doing what they love and just manage to get by, as well as that 60% fail by their 5th birthday means taxing an extra 7.5% of tax will mean they become more vulnerable, Humphrey tells us.
'No one pays our pension for us, so for me it's the difference between my marketing budget or my pension. I have to make a choice next year, I can't have both because of how much tax is going to be taken out of my business,' she added.
In addition to the dividend tax, this year small businesses will have to grapple with auto enrolment, the National Living Wage and costs in general increasing, as well as ongoing economic uncertainty.
Humphrey feels that those closest to small businesses, including accountants, should be doing more than sleepwalking straight into the tax. She's concerned that the petition isn't going to reach Parliament because not enough businesses even know about it.
'The accountants have done very little about this. All they're saying is, there's a new tax coming, you've got to pay it, come and talk to us. Very few accountants are going, 'oh my God there's a petition, you should all sign it'.'
'A few have really jumped on it and have been very proactive with their clients. Most accountants are going, this could really help my clients, they're just sleepwalking into it and sleepwalking clients into it as well,' she says.
Why companies fail
According to Humphrey, who's also a chartered management accountant, there needs to be a more balanced view in the media of the reality of running a small business, as well as better education of finance and marketing.'There's a lot of cheerleading about business startups and it's all 'amazing, fantastic' and it is amazing but it's also really hard work, lonely and there are very low times as wella s the highs. People need a more balanced, realistic view of what running a business is really like.
'Most accountants talk at small companies in jargon, this barrier builds up where they just don't understand their finances so they kind of just retreat from it. They often don't learn important things like the basics of how to manage cash,' she tells UKBF.
There's just over four weeks left to sign the online petition if you feel the same way about the dividend tax, and you can do so here.
To comment on this article, please make sure you're logged in or signed up to UKBF!
