Many of the provisions announced in the March budget have had to be dropped as there was not enough time to get them through Parliament before the Election. Unless you spend all your time reading HMRC notices you can be forgiven for being confused so below is a summary of which announcements will be implemented and which have been dropped.
These provisions will still be implemented:
- 2017/18 income tax rates and bands
- Reduction in corporation tax
- IR35 contractors and the public sector
- Abolition of employee share schemes
- Changes to taxation of salary sacrifice schemes
- Increases in IPT rates
- Changes to alcohol and tobacco duties
- Soft drinks levy
These provisions will be dropped:
- Changes to corporation tax loss regime and corresponding anti-avoidance provisions
- Reduction of dividend allowance from £5,000 to £2,000
- Restriction of pension money purchase allowance
- Deemed domicile provisions
- All investment relief provisions (EIS, SEIS, VCT, etc)
- Making tax digital legislation
Whether all these provisions will be re-instated in a post-election budget is debatable, but our Autumn e-newsletter will feature an update.
What is certain is that digital tax reporting is coming and all business owners should use it as an opportunity to review their systems. If they currently only prepare figures annually then they will find it much more efficient to use online accounts software. It will also provide much more useful information about the state of their business.