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Are business owners rushing to sell ahead of Budget over potential Business Asset Disposal Relief hike?

ended 17. September 2026

Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR) has gone from 10% to 14% to 18% in eighteen months, and the Budget on 28 October may move it again. 

Every owner weighing a sale is asking the same question right now: should I sell before the Budget?

Research by Newspage showed that business owners have already rushed to sell ahead of one BADR rise.

The 2024/25 figures, the year before the first rate rise, show 61,000 claimants on £18.4bn of gains – up from 42,000 and £11.0bn the year before, after three flat years. That is a 45% jump in owners cashing out and a 67% jump in gains, ahead of the move from 10% to 14%. There is not data for the rise to 18% yet.

  • Business Asset Disposal Relief has gone from 10% to 14% to 18% – do you think it could go up to 20% in the Budget next month?
  • Do you expect to see a surge in sales before rise to 18% when that comes out?
  • Did you see a surge of owners selling last time it went up?
  • Have you seen a rise in business owners talking to you about selling recently?

Responses by the end of the week.

4 responses from the Newspage community

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Scott GallacherVerified
Director at Rowley Turton
With BADR having risen rapidly from 10% to 14% and now 18%, the reason we may not see another dramatic surge in the latest figures is that many owners may already have brought forward their exits to secure the earlier 10% rate.

Of course, anyone still considering a sale will inevitably have half an eye on the Budget, and another increase could encourage some to get deals completed sooner.

But this is much bigger than BADR. Under successive governments, business owners have increasingly found themselves targeted through higher taxes, reduced allowances, rising employment costs and a growing regulatory burden.

As a business owner myself, I understand the feeling that the deck is increasingly being stacked against you. The conversation I'm hearing more often is: "I've had enough, Scott. Do I have enough to sell up, retire a few years earlier, travel more and enjoy the wealth I've spent decades creating?"

For a government needing growth, increasing CGT now would be an own goal.
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Martin RaynerVerified
Financial Adviser at Compton Financial Services
BADR is already climbing toward capital gains territory. Another Budget lift would surprise nobody.

Labour’s direction of travel is clear: raise more money, not curb spending. With manifesto limits on the main income-tax levers, pressure falls on rates like BADR. Core supporters will not object to another “tax the rich” turn of the screw. A move toward 20% is almost a certainty.

Owners who wanted out have known that since the election. The live effect is not a mass stampede of new sellers. It is people already in the process speeding up before the Budget.

Push it any closer to full capital gains and the reward for taking business risk collapses. Tax entrepreneurs like people holding shares and Britain’s growth stagnates.
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Tony RedondoVerified
Founder at Cosmos Currency Exchange
Everything points to a third tax-raising Budget next month. Business Asset Disposal Relief has already crept from 10% to 14%, then 18%, putting capital gains tax squarely at the centre of every exit strategy. A move to 20% now looks a distinct possibility, fully aligning BADR with the standard lower CGT rate and stripping out a key incentive for business founders. For a government that won't stop talking about growth, it's an odd way to treat the very people who deliver it. HMRC data shows a 45% jump in claimants to 61,000, and a 67% surge in realised gains ahead of previous rate changes tells its own story: when tax hikes loom, owners accelerate timelines to lock in higher net proceeds. Transaction activity spikes as sellers compress deal cycles to beat the cut-off. Advisory conversations bear this out, with more owners re-running sale timing and cash flow models to see whether bringing an exit forward stacks up before further relief erosion eats into net returns.
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Harvey DhillonVerified
Founder & CEO at Zmartly
BADR is already at 18 per cent, and the main lower rate of Capital Gains Tax is also 18 per cent. So for an owner whose gain sits in the basic rate band, the relief is now worth nothing. For a higher rate taxpayer it saves six points against 24 per cent. Moving it to 20 per cent would not align BADR with the lower rate, it would put it above. So the argument is over the last few points of a relief that has already mostly gone.

61,000 claimants on £18.4 billion is an average gain of about £302,000, well under the £1 million lifetime limit. These are not wealthy people cashing out, they are ordinary business owners. And anyone who has already used their £1 million has no relief left at all, so the rate makes no difference to them either.

Most owner-managed companies are never sold in any case, because there is no buyer for them. The exit is closing the company down. A strike-off only gets capital treatment on the first £25,000, and anything above that is taxed as income.