With less than an hour before Chancellor George Osborne reveals the contents of this year’s Budget, expectations are running high for some business-friendly measures to ease the plight of small and medium-sized firms. Swindon Business News has teamed up with accountants Morris Owen to bring unparalleled coverage of today’s Budget.
We will be reporting on the Budget as it happens with instant analysis and comment from Morris Owen partner Rob Beale and a panel of experts drawn from Swindon’s business community.
We will also be tweeting live Budget update while the Chancellor is making his speech in the Commons and then in next month’s Swindon Business News will provide a full round up with local comment and analysis from Morris Owen.
Rob Beale believes there will be some help for businesses but added: “With no money to play with we expect George Osborne to take with one hand in order to give with the other.
“In order to help business, reversing the cuts in the Annual Investment Allowance limits from £100,000 to £25,000 would help – encouraging business to invest for the future is important. “We are also expecting further changes to cut red tape for business owners, such as increasing company audit thresholds to remove companies form this requirement as well as putting more resources into HMRC to allow them to help business.
“Both from a political and economic perspective, the expectation is for an increase in anti-avoidance tax legislation to try to close the loopholes currently being exploited, perhaps with special focus on stamp duty and income tax schemes. It would also come as no surprise to see tax relief on pension contributions being restricted for higher rate tax payers.
“Finally, we expect the theme of the Budget to be that the Government is listening and is supporting families; accordingly we expect changes to the previously proposed withdrawal of child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers and further increases to the personal allowance to help lower paid workers.”
Personal taxes for the top and bottom earners are likely to dominate the political fall out from today’s Budget.
The Chancellor is widely tipped to reduce the amount of money people can earn before they start paying tax but is also set to unveil a cut in the top rate of tax from 50p to 45p – however not for a year.
The Chancellor will say he is not giving the rich a net tax cut as money will be clawed back by reducing tax avoidance and raising property taxes.
However Labour will say the chancellor should be helping ordinary families instead.
