As ever, in the last couple of weeks there has been a huge amount of speculation about what may or may not be announced at the Autumn Statement 2023 – abolition of inheritance tax; increase in the inheritance nil rate band; a stamp duty land tax holiday; a cut in the rate of income tax… it goes on and on.
But as we’ve come to learn, all that matters is what’s in the Chancellor’s speech on the day… oh, and the stuff they don’t mention but you find while wading through the papers later on!
This Autumn Statement was no different… lots of talk about growth (110 measures in fact, although not many policies), but the need to balance this against the risk of fuelling inflation. So in reality, a small tax cut and a few tweaks around the edges, but not much more.
The key highlights were:
- Changes to national insurance for the employed and the self-employed
- A move to the cash basis of reporting for the self-employed
- Making the full expensing of capital expenditure for companies permanent
- Reforms of the R&D tax reliefs
In addition, there were consequential changes to the pension provisions following up from the abolition of the lifetime allowance in the Spring Budget 2023 and some interesting proposals in the document inconspicuously named “changes to HMRC data collection” which could have potentially significant implications for owner managed businesses.
Follow the links to read more, and if you have any questions, please get in touch at experts@tacs.co.uk.
All in all, this fiscal event was nowhere near as exciting as the speculation in the run up, but one would suppose that any earth-shattering announcements would be pulled out of the hat just before the General Election… or is that just a bit too cynical?
