Set against the backdrop of ongoing Brexit negotiations and exactly five months to the day before the UK leaves the EU, the Chancellor Philip Hammond presented his second Autumn Budget on Monday 29 October 2018.
The headline from the Budget was ‘austerity is coming to an end – but discipline will remain’
But with huge uncertainty and a great deal of water to pass under the bridge before Brexit on 29 March,
in the event of a No Deal Brexit, the planned Spring Statement next year could become an Emergency Budget.
Main Autumn 2018 Budget tax proposals are:
- Increases to the personal allowance and basic rate band
- Extending IR35 off-payroll working, to medium/large organisations in the private sector – something which will have a huge potential impact in Coventry and Warwickshire with the number of contractors in the automotive engineering industry
- A temporary increase to the Annual Investment Allowance from £200k to £1million from 1 January 2019
- Freezing the VAT registration threshold for a further two years at £85k
- Changes to Entrepreneurs’ Relief and private residence relief
- Measures to tackle the plastic problem
- Previously announced measures include increases in car benefits
- Extending the charge to gains on non-UK residents of non-residential UK property
Plans for Making Tax Digital for Business were only fleetingly referred to in the Budget speech, but huge changes are coming in the next few years for the whole UK tax system, beginning with VAT reporting from April 2019. Full details can be found HERE
