Dutifully, we watched Philip Hammond deliver his latest Autumn Statement this week, and soaked up his exhortations, thanking the hard working British people for getting us out of the mess left by the previous government, or should that be the banking crisis?
Apparently, the end of austerity is in sight, but just in case Brexit turns out to the no-deal variety, he held back from redistributing his hard won gains until we know more.
There were increases in the personal tax allowance, to £12,500, and a significant, but temporary, increase in the Annual Investment Allowance, from £200,000 to £1m.
There was an awful lot of detail in the supporting documentation loaded to the internet following the budget speech. It will be interesting to see if the resulting Finance Bill, when it is published, breaks new records for number of pages and complexity.
Should practitioners be grateful for small mercies? That there were no draconian changes to regulations. No doubt software developers, providing accounting and tax solutions, will be pleased that son of Making Tax Digital or some such change in UK tax policy has not surfaced to create yet another expensive development requirement to stay the right side of tax compliance.
Over the coming weeks Informanagement will be monitoring the developing tax position following the budget. Watch our newsfeeds to keep up-to-date. It will be interesting to see how this normally sedate process plays out as we edge close to the 29 March 2019 EU withdrawal date.
Overall, we were left with the impression that all was well, that steps were being taken to end the austere squeeze, and yet really, not much seems to have changed – now you see it, now you don’t.
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