Company bosses sound the alarm on taxes.

The chiefs of two of UK’s biggest businesses have sounded the alarm over rising costs, regulation and economic uncertainty amidst mounting concern the Chancellor will inflict further damage to the UK’s competitiveness at the forthcoming Budget.

The boss of British Telecom (BT), Allison Kirkby warned the telecoms industry was “already at peak government inflicted costs” while the founder of AO World, John Roberts said he feared the UK was heading into a recession.

Speaking at the Connected Britain conference recently, Kirkby said: "We pay in business rates, energy levies and other costs associated with regulation and compliance ten times the amount our peers pay in countries like Germany and the Netherlands”.

Kirkby said investors “need certainty that they’re going to get a return on their investment and they get that certainty through stability on regulatory and fiscal policy. We are going into what could be a very difficult Budget for the Chancellor”.

She added: “We’ve got to ensure that for these massive infrastructure bills that will accrue billions of value to the economy in the coming years, investors and citizens and companies get the return on investment”.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the BBC, Roberts said businesses were “looking at how they can take people out. Costs walk into businesses on legs — those legs have got much more expensive. It is much more difficult to recruit people, it’s much less flexible than it has ever been to recruit people”, Roberts said. “We’ve lived through a few recessions in the last 25 years — I think we’re heading into another one”.

The remarks come as businesses brace for another painful round of tax hikes due to be unveiled at the Budget in the coming weeks.

Furthermore, the UK’s largest retail business group has warned the Treasury that further tax hikes will keep shop prices “higher for longer” after data showed food inflation in September remained at its highest levels since the cost-of-living crisis kicked off.

British Retail Consortium (BRC) chief executive Helen Dickenson said even if the Chancellor chooses to target businesses with another round of tax hikes at the upcoming Budget, it will be “British households who will bear the consequences of the Chancellor’s decisions”.

She added: “While retailers continue to absorb higher costs as much as possible and deliver value to customers, any further tax rises in the upcoming Budget would keep shop prices higher for longer”.

Dickenson unleashed the warning alongside the BRC’s monthly shop price monitor, which found annual food inflation stayed at an elevated 4.2 per cent in September. The finding extended a worrying run of price readings in the grocery category. An investment analyst at AJ Bell, Dan Coatsworth, branded the outlook a “retailer’s worst nightmare”.

The Chancellor has been told to introduce measures in the Budget which will encourage more people in the UK to become retail investors. Clearscore CEO, Justin Basini said that more people needed to be persuaded to start investing as a key way to help boost Britain’s growth.

When asked what he would ask Rachel Reeves if he could pick up the phone to her ahead of the Budget, Basini said: “I think there are a few things that I would ask for. The first is to continue her efforts to unlock the huge amount of capital that is sitting on the sidelines. There is a lot of money sitting there waiting to be invested. I think it needs to come to the UK capital markets. I think it needs to come to UK companies”.

He added: “So all of the Mansion House accords that she puts out encouraging pension funds to invest in great UK companies, listed UK companies — I would be really encouraging of that. Then I would also be encouraging of getting retail investors to start to see the long-term potential of backing UK businesses”.