More of Britain’s “well-loved” retailers will go to the wall if the government unleashes another round of tax hikes on businesses in the Autumn, the boss of the British Retail Consortium (BRC) has warned, as fresh data from the body found that nearly nine in 10 high street bosses are struggling with the tax burden.

Helen Dickinson said that the price rises, job cuts and investment reductions that retailers have had to carry out in response to last year’s Budget would “accelerate [and be] worse” if the Treasury opted to raid the sector again at October’s fiscal event.

“What we saw last year was a step change in the cost base,” she told City AM. “If there is another step change in the cost base, impacts we’ve already started to see over the last six to nine months would only accelerate.”

Retail is among the worst affected sectors from the Chancellor’s decision to mount an unprecedented tax raid on the private sector at last year’s Autumn Budget. Along with the hospitality industry, retailers were especially exposed to the £25bn hike to employer national insurance contributions, because of their reliance on large quantities of relatively low-paid and part-time staff.

Parallel to the NICs rise, retailers also shouldered an above-inflation hike to the minimum wage, which the BRC has estimated will cost its members over £2.7bn annually in higher wage bills. It chalked up the overall damage to the sector from the Budget at £7bn.

Several high street stalwarts – including Homebase, Hobbycraft and latterly River Island – have been pushed into administration since the changes were announced. And earlier this week, insolvency specialist Begbies Traynor judged the retail industry to have endured the third most extreme rise in businesses under “critical financial distress” over the past year.

Dickinson warned that the failure of more household names from her industry would be a “natural consequence” of another bout of tax rises.

“It wouldn’t just be more of the same,” she said in reference to the effects that a higher tax burden would have on her body’s members. “It would be an acceleration and we would see more business failures.”