The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, delivered his Budget this afternoon, promising lower taxes and a Budget for long term growth.

The tax changes include:

Personal taxes

• National Insurance: rate reductions from April 2024
  • Employee: reduced from 10% to 8%
  • Self-employed: reduced from 9% to 6%
• Non-UK domicile regime:
  • Current regime to be abolished
  • Concept of domicile to be abolished
  • New residence-based system from April 2025 – for new arrivals, no UK taxes on overseas income or gains for first four years of residence
• High Income Child Benefit Charge
  • Income threshold to be increased to £60,000 from April 2024
  • Consultation to follow on moving the charge to a household based system
• Personal wealth management: New British ISA – an additional £5k annual allowance to invest in UK equities

Property taxes

• Capital Gains Tax on residential property: higher rate reduced from 28% to 24%
• Abolition of the furnished holiday lettings regime
• Stamp Duty Land Tax: abolition of the multiple dwellings relief

Creative industries

• New tax credit for UK independent films with a budget of less than £15m
• Higher tax reliefs for touring and orchestral productions and non-touring productions to be made permanent at 45% and 40% respectively
• Audio-visual tax credit increased by 5% and cap removed
• Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax sunset clause to be removed

Other

• VAT: registration threshold to be increased to £90,000 (from £85,000) from 1 April 2024
• Capital allowances: full expensing to be extended to leased assets
• Alcohol duty freeze extended to February 2025
• Fuel duty frozen and 5p cut retained for a further 12 months
• Introduction of an excise duty on vaping products from 2026

Further details will follow in our full summary. Please contact Katharine Arthur or Mark Pattenden if you have any queries.