What can we expect from this Spring Budget?

Philip Eagle

Tax Director
13/02/2019

Philip Hammond will open the famous red budget dispatch box and deliver his last spring budget tomorrow, Wednesday 8th March. This will not be the last budget but rather the main budget announcement which will now be moving to the autumn.

At one time not so long ago the Chancellor and his team entered into a strict period of purdah and the budget announcements were a complete surprise. More recently there has been a complete 180 degrees turn and the majority of announcements have been leaked or at least heralded in advance of the actual budget speech.

This year we have gone back to the old times and from a tax perspective very little seems to have been leaked. Hopefully, this is somewhat of a policy change, although recently we have seen some announcements which look like they have been made up on the hoof.

One point which has been leaked and is part of an ongoing campaign is to increase the tax cost for the self-employed. The most likely areas to be attacked here are the national insurance contribution paid by the self-employed and possibly some of the expenses which can be claimed. Other areas in which we expect to see some changes are business rates and possibly further changes to stamp duty land tax although the rules here have been changed on a regular basis over recent budgets.

All will be revealed tomorrow and we will have further updates and blogs on our website and full details and analysis in due course.