Wesley Thorne, 52, and his wife Toni live near Bristol with their two daughters.
They’d like a bigger house but say stamp duty would add £15,000 to £20,000 to the cost of moving so want that tax scrapped in the Budget.
Stamp duty is a tax due if you buy a property or land over a certain price in England and Northern Ireland.
“To me, that seems like an immoral tax just on having a home,” says Wesley.
He hopes the chancellor will “either scrap stamp duty altogether [or] just apply it to properties on a much higher valuation,” he says.
Wesley and Toni run an online sweet shop and market stall, and are members of the Federation of Small Businesses. They currently pay themselves about £60,000 a year, but that amount can vary.
He says cost pressures have “never been as bad”, adding “we’re hammered from every direction” by skyrocketing sugar and chocolate prices, national minimum wage increases and rises in business rates.
Currently small businesses like Wesley and Toni’s must register to pay VAT if their taxable turnover is over £90,000. Wesley would like that threshold to be higher.
