Budget 2017 – Part 2.

22nd November 2017

The Chancellor Philip Hammond has today delivered the Autumn Budget.

Paul Morton, Investment Planning Director, my wealth, comments;

“Despite many rumours of further changes to pension allowances (lifetime and annual) and the removal and /or reduction to tax-free cash lump sum entitlement, the good news is that the Budget was void of any change. Instead the Budget focused on housing, ensuring the economy remained productive and establishing the UK as a world leader in new technologies.

The Chancellor reiterated the government’s commitment to raising the personal allowance to £12,500 and the higher rate tax threshold to £50,000 by 2020. To this end, it was announced that from April 2018 the personal allowance and higher rate threshold will increase to £11,850 and £46,350 respectively.

The anticipated raid on pensions which has been a favourite of previous Chancellors failed to materialise and therefore, the only change to note is the planned CPI increase in the lifetime allowance raising it to £1,030,000 from 2018/19.

The ISA allowance will remain unchanged at the present £20,000 and the annual subscription limit for Junior ISAs and Child Trust Funds will up uprated in line with CPI to £4,260.

There were no changes to Capital Gains Tax, another area rumoured for the Chancellor’s attention.

Finally, it was announced that the government will publish a consultation in 2018 on how to make the taxation of trusts simpler, fairer, and more transparent.”

We will provide more details on the outcome of the consultation in due course.