Greens announce windfall tax on the profits of big banks to help more than a million small and medium businesses

In a drive to end rip-off Britain, the Green Party has announced it would levy a 38% windfall tax on domestic profits above £800m for the UK's biggest banks, to raise at least £19 billion for small businesses. 

This money would be used to double the Employment Allowance for SMEs, taking up to £10,500 off their National Insurance bills and giving a lifeline to struggling small and medium-sized businesses.

The UK's biggest banks are regularly making record-breaking profits, not from improved services or products, but from high interest rates set by the Bank of England in an attempt to curb inflation. 

Barclays saw profits jump in the six months to the end of June, boosting its bonuses for executives for the first half of the year by nearly 30% while advising investors on how to cash in on the chaos caused by extreme weather. Despite huge profits, banks are not passing these on to depositors instead paying out to shareholders. 

Meanwhile small and medium-sized businesses are facing a cocktail of cost pressures' according to the British Chambers of Commerce. 

The Green Party says major banks profiteering from chaos' as inflation rises should be forced to pay up to support struggling high streets and boost local economies. 

Green Party leader Zack Polanski said: 

While we are in a cost of living crisis, and with people unable to pay bills and small businesses being directly squeezed by interest rate rises which are expanding already obscene profits by the big banks, the Greens are calling for an end to rip-off Britain.

 Small businesses lie at the heart of our communities. The large banks are cashing in on the backs of the small businesses who are the real innovators and creators, and profiteering from chaos and misery while ordinary people struggle. 

We will take back a proportion of these profits and give them to small and medium-sized businesses. Our plans would give a lifeline to more than a million SMEs who will be able to employ more people and add to their communities and our economy in a way that the obscene bonus payouts of the big banks do not. 

ENDS 

Notes

1. The proposed tax is only on net interest income and fees (e.g. mortgage fees) from UK retail banking. This would capture windfalls from higher interest rates enjoyed at the expense of the British public, without increasing taxes on banks' wider business, removing incentives for operations to be moved abroad in response. 

2. HSBC reported profits of £14.5bn for the first half of 2026; Barclays, Lloyds Bank and NatWest made £6.1bn, £4.3bn and £4.3bn, respectively, over the same period.

3. Analysis by Positive Money shows that the windfall tax will raise an estimated £19 billion, £14.8 billion of which could be used to afford every small and medium-sized business with more than one employee an additional £10,500 worth of NI relief by doubling Employment Allowance.

4. In 2025, there were an estimated 1,409,395 small and medium sized businesses with 1-249 employees.