Computacenter has said a planned rise in National Insurance Contributions (NICs) will cost it as much as £5m in 2025, highlighting the scale of the cost pressures that the tax hike will put on large employers in the sector.

The Hatfield-based technology and services provider, which made the prediction in a trading update on Tuesday, is one of the largest employers in Britain’s tech sector, with more than 20,000 employees worldwide, of which the greatest share are based in the UK.

Computacenter said the forecast was based on the tax hike coming into effect in April 2025. That would suggest the tax cost for the firm would rise by £6.7m when adjusting for a full year.

The rules around class 1 NICs will be changed later this year, such that the threshold at which employers start to pay the secondary rate of NICs will be reduced from £9,100 to £5,000 while the secondary NICs rate is set to rise from 13.8% to 15%. The combined changes announced in the budget are thought to raise as much as £40bn in tax receipts for the government.

The move, which was unveiled by chancellor Rachel Reeves in her November Budget, has attracted widespread criticism. Reeves said she made the change in order to help fix the foundations of the public finances and invest in public services.

It comes as Computacenter reported a 2% fall in annual turnover in 2024. The firm said its technology sourcing gross invoiced income increase by 13% and services revenue rose 5%. In services for 2024 as a whole, its professional services unit delivered strong revenue growth, partly offset by a weaker performance in managed services.

Computacenter said: “While we are pleased with overall execution towards the end of the year, with Germany and North America delivering strong performances, parts of our larger current Technology Sourcing projects in the US and the UK have slipped into the early part of 2025.

“Looking to 2025 as a whole, we are mindful of the uncertain macroeconomic and political environments in some of the European countries in which we operate.”

Computacenter shares rose 4.5% in early London trade.

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