On March 15 Chancellor Jeremy Hunt presented his ‘Budget for Growth’, amid a backdrop of industrial action, inflation and a cost-of-living-crisis. The changes outlined yesterday focused on boosting the UK’s economic growth with inflation continuing to fall.

Personal Tax

The personal allowance

The income tax personal allowance was already fixed at the current level until April 2026 and will now be maintained for an additional two years until April 2028 at £12,570.

The government will uprate the married couple’s allowance and blind person’s allowance by inflation for 2023/24.

There is a reduction in the personal allowance for those with ‘adjusted net income’ over £100,000. The reduction is £1 for every £2 of income above £100,000. So there is no personal allowance where adjusted net income exceeds £125,140.

The marriage allowance

The marriage allowance permits certain couples, where neither party pays tax in the tax year at a rate other than the basic rate (or intermediate rate in Scotland), to transfer £1,260 of their personal allowance to their spouse or civil partner.  This is worth approximately £250 a year to a couple who qualify for the allowance.

Tax bands and rates

The basic rate of tax is 20%. In 2023/24 the band of income taxable at this rate is £37,700 so that the threshold at which the 40% band applies is £50,270 for those who are entitled to the full personal allowance.

Once again, the basic rate band is frozen at £37,700 up until April 2028. The National Insurance contributions upper earnings limit and upper profits limit will remain aligned to the higher rate threshold at £50,270 for these years.

From 6 April 2023, the point at which individuals pay the additional rate will be lowered from £150,000 to £125,140.

Tax on savings income

The Savings Allowance applies to savings income and the available allowance in a tax year depends on the individual’s marginal rate of income tax. Broadly, individuals taxed at up to the basic rate of tax have an allowance of £1,000. For higher rate taxpayers the allowance is £500. No allowance is due to additional rate taxpayers.

Some individuals qualify for a 0% starting rate of tax on savings income up to £5,000. However, the rate is not available if taxable non-savings income (broadly earnings, pensions, trading profits and property income, less allocated allowances and reliefs) exceeds £5,000.

Tax on dividends

Currently, the first £2,000 of dividends is chargeable to tax at 0% (the Dividend Allowance). This will be reduced to £1,000 for 2023/24 and £500 for 2024/25.

These changes will apply to the whole of the UK.

Dividends received above the allowance are taxed at rates of up to 39.35% dependent on an individuals personal circumstances. 

Homes for Ukraine scheme

In March 2022 the government announced the Homes for Ukraine scheme, a humanitarian sponsorship visa scheme allowing individuals, charities, community groups and businesses in the UK to sponsor Ukrainians arriving in the UK. As part of this scheme the government announced that sponsors would receive ‘thank you’ payments for housing an individual or family.

Income tax and corporation tax exemptions for ‘thank you’ payments made by local authorities to sponsors under the Homes for Ukraine scheme will be introduced. Also, temporary reliefs from the Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings and Stamp Duty Land Tax will be introduced.

Pension tax limits

This measure supports the government’s efforts to encourage inactive individuals to return to work, in particular those aged 50 and above, and it removes incentives to reduce hours or leave the labour market due to pension tax limits. Legislation will be introduced in Spring Finance Bill 2023 and will have effect from 6 April 2023.

Rendering void assignments of income tax repayments

This measure will apply to individuals entitled to income tax repayments from HMRC who wish to use a business, accountancy firm or agent to facilitate their access to a repayment. It will also affect the facilitating businesses, accountancy firms and agents.

It will remove a taxpayer’s ability to legally assign to a third party their income tax repayment, or their right to an income tax repayment. The effect of this is that assignments of income tax repayments will have no legal effect and the repayment will remain the property of the taxpayer.

This will affect assignments of which notice is received by HMRC on or after 15 March 2023.

Employment

National Insurance Contributions (NICs)

A similar principle to that outlined above for income tax thresholds will be followed in respect of many of the NICs thresholds, namely that they are frozen at the limits for the preceding year and will remain at those levels until 2028.

However, the government will uprate the Class 2 and Class 3 NICs rates for 2023/24 to £3.45 per week and £17.45 respectively.  The rates of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and National Living Wage (NLW) will also increase from 1 April 2023.

Taxable benefits for company cars for 2023/24

The rates of tax for company cars remain frozen until 2024/25. Future car benefit rates have been announced for 2025/26 to 2027/28 which increase rates for company car drivers.

From 6 April 2023 the figure used as the basis for calculating the benefit for employees who receive free private fuel from their employers for company cars is increased to £27,800.

Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI): improvements to the process to grant options

The measure makes changes to simplify EMI by removing two administrative requirements when companies grant EMI options on or after 6 April 2023. Existing EMI share options granted before 6 April 2023 that have not been excercised will also benefit from the changes.

From 6 April 2024, the government will also extend the deadline for notifying an EMI option from 92 days following the grant to the 6 July following the end of the tax year. This will be legislated separately and the impacts will be set out at that point.

Corporation tax rates

The expected increase in the rate of corporation tax for many companies from April 2023 to 25% will go ahead. This means that, from April 2023, the rate will increase to 25% for companies with profits over £250,000. The 19% rate will become a small profits rate payable by companies with profits of £50,000 or less. Companies with profits between £50,001 and £250,000 will pay tax at the main rate reduced by a marginal relief, providing a gradual increase in the effective corporation tax rate.

Capital allowances

The super-deduction regime, which gives a 130% enhanced first year allowance (FYA) to companies on the purchase of qualifying plant and machinery, comes to an end on 31 March 2023. Instead, the government has announced Full Expensing, a 100% FYA, which allows companies to deduct the cost of qualifying plant and machinery from their profits straight away with no expenditure limit. Qualifying expenditure will include most plant and machinery, as long as it is unused and not second-hand, but will not include cars. Full Expensing will be effective for acquisitions on or after 1 April 2023 but before 1 April 2026.

Research and Development (R&D) relief

For expenditure on or after 1 April 2023, the Research and Development Expenditure Credit (RDEC) rate will increase from 13% to 20% but the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) additional deduction will decrease from 130% to 86% and the SME credit rate will decrease from 14.5% to 10%. A higher rate of SME payable credit of 14.5% will apply to loss-making SMEs which are R&D intensive.

Other announced changes to the R&D regime include expanding qualifying expenditure to include the costs of datasets and of cloud computing. All claims for R&D reliefs will have to be made digitally and be accompanied by a compulsory additional information form. Companies will also need to notify HMRC that they intend to make a claim within six months of the end of the period of account to which the claim relates, generally if they have not made an R&D claim in the previous three years. These changes apply to claims in respect of accounting periods which begin on or after 1 April 2023 apart from the additional information form, which will be required for claims made on or after 1 August 2023.

The restriction to relief on overseas expenditure, designed to refocus support towards UK innovation, will now come into effect from 1 April 2024 instead of 1 April 2023.

Making Tax Digital (MTD) for income tax

The MTD regime is based on businesses being required to maintain their accounting records in a specified digital format and submit extracts from those records regularly to HMRC. In what appears to be a never-ending story, the government has announced a further delay in MTD for income tax self assessment (ITSA).

The mandation of MTD for ITSA will now be introduced from April 2026, with businesses, self-employed individuals and landlords with income over £50,000 mandated to join first, a change from the original £10,000 limit.

Those with income over £30,000 will be mandated from April 2027.

Accounting periods that are not aligned to tax years

As part of the MTD project, changes have been made to alter the rules under which trading profits made by self-employed individuals and partnerships are allocated to tax years.  

The changes mainly affect unincorporated businesses that do not draw up annual accounts to 31 March or 5 April. The transition to the new rules will take place in the 2023/24 tax year and the new rules will come into force from 6 April 2024.

Simplification measures for small businesses

The government is introducing a number of simplification measures to the tax system for small businesses with the aim of encouraging growth by reducing the administrative burden.

The announcements include changes to IT systems to allow tax agents to payroll benefits in kind on behalf of their clients and simplifications to the customs import and export processes. 

Further consultations were launched which may lead to additional reforms including expanding the use of the cash basis. Proposed changes in the consultation include: 

• increasing the thresholds so that more unincorporated businesses would be eligible
• making it the default for eligible businesses
• relaxing the restrictions on interest costs and loss reliefs.

Investment Zones

An Investment Zones programme is being launched to encourage investment in 12 high-potential knowledge-intensive growth clusters across the UK. It is expected that eight sites will be in England and four across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A five-year tax package will allow businesses located on special tax sites within Investment Zones to benefit from a number of tax reliefs including Stamp Duty Land Tax relief, enhanced capital allowances, structures and buildings allowances and secondary Class 1 NICs relief for eligible employers.

Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme

From April 2023, companies will be able to raise up to £250,000 of Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) investment, a two-thirds increase. To enable more companies to use SEIS, the gross asset limit will be increased to £350,000 and the age limit from two to three years. To support these increases, the annual investor limit will be doubled to £200,000.

Capital gains tax (CGT) rates

No changes to the current rates of CGT have been announced. This means that the rate remains at 10%, to the extent that any income tax basic rate band is available, and 20% thereafter. Higher rates of 18% and 28% apply for certain gains, mainly chargeable gains on residential properties, with the exception of any element that qualifies for Private Residence Relief.

There is still potential to qualify for a 10% rate, regardless of any available income tax basic rate band, up to a lifetime limit for each individual. This is where specific types of disposals qualify for:

• Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR). This is targeted at directors and employees who own at least 5% of the ordinary share capital in the company, provided other minimum criteria are also met. It can also apply to owners of unincorporated businesses.
• Investors’ Relief. The main beneficiaries of this relief are investors in unquoted trading companies who have newly-subscribed shares but are not employees.

Current lifetime limits are £1 million for BADR and £10 million for Investors’ Relief.

CGT annual exemption

The government has announced that the capital gains tax annual exempt amount will be reduced from £12,300 to £6,000 from 6 April 2023 and to £3,000 from 6 April 2024.

Chargeable gains: separated spouses and civil partnerships

The current legislation applying to the transfer of assets between an individual and their spouse or civil partner provides that such transfers made in any tax year in which they are living together are on a no gain/no loss basis. Where spouses or civil partners separate, no gain/no loss treatment is currently only available in relation to disposals made in the remainder of the tax year in which they cease to live together. After that, transfers are treated as normal disposals for CGT purposes.

A number of changes are proposed to the rules that apply to transfers of assets between spouses and civil partners who are in the process of separating and no longer living together. These include the following:

• Separating spouses or civil partners will be given up to three years after the year they cease to live together in which to make no gain/no loss transfers.
• No gain/no loss treatment will also apply to assets that separating spouses or civil partners transfer between themselves as part of a formal divorce agreement.
• A spouse or civil partner who retains an interest in the former matrimonial home will be given an option to claim Private Residence Relief when it is sold.
• Individuals who have transferred their interest in the former matrimonial home to their ex-spouse or civil partner and are entitled to receive a percentage of the proceeds when that home is eventually sold will be able to apply the same tax treatment to those proceeds when received that applied when they transferred their original interest in the home to their ex-spouse or civil partner. 

Other CGT changes

Inheritance tax (IHT) nil rate bands

The nil rate band has been frozen at £325,000 since 2009 and this will now continue up to 5 April 2028. An additional nil rate band, called the ‘residence nil rate band’ (RNRB) is also frozen at the current £175,000 level until 5 April 2028. A taper reduces the amount of the RNRB by £1 for every £2 that the ‘net’ value of the death estate is more than £2 million. Net value is after deducting permitted liabilities but before exemptions and reliefs. This taper will also be maintained at the current level.

Estates in administration and trusts

Changes are introduced which will affect the trustees of trusts and personal representatives who deal with deceased persons’ estates in administration, and beneficiaries of estates.

For 2023/24, technical amendments are made to ensure that, for beneficiaries of estates, their tax credits and savings allowance continue to operate correctly.

For 2024/25, changes will:

• Provide that trusts and estates with income up to £500 do not pay tax on that income as it arises.
• Remove the default basic rate and dividend ordinary rate of tax that applies to the first £1,000 slice of discretionary trust income.
• Provide that beneficiaries of UK estates do not pay tax on income distributed to them that was within the £500 limit for the personal representatives.

VAT

The VAT registration and deregistration thresholds will not change for a further period of two years from 1 April 2024, staying at £85,000 and £83,000 respectively.

Changes to VAT penalties and interest

The government announced pre-pandemic that it intended to change the way interest and penalties applied for VAT purposes. After a number of delays the new rules were implemented for VAT periods starting on or after 1 January 2023. The default surcharge was replaced by new penalties if a VAT return is submitted late or VAT is paid late. There are also changes to how VAT interest is calculated.

Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings

The annual chargeable amounts will be uplifted by inflation for the 2023/24 charging period.

Plastic Packaging Tax

Plastic Packaging Tax was introduced on 1 April 2022 to encourage the use of recycled plastic in packaging and to divert plastic away from incineration or landfill. The rate will increase to £210.82 per tonne for all plastic packaging manufactured in the UK or imported into the UK on or after 1 April 2023.