There’s nothing quite like the calling of a snap election to put the cat among the pigeons! As our elected representatives turn their thoughts to the campaign trail, this has inevitably diverted their attention and restricted the time available to put everything proposed by Chancellor Hammond in his Budget into legislation.
The result of this is that a shortened Finance Bill has been passed, and a number of the proposals contained within the original Bill have been dropped. For now, at least.
Those areas which have currently been dropped are:
- The new rules on corporate loss relief
- New rules restricting deductions for corporate interest expense
- The changes to the substantial shareholding exemption
- The reduction from £10,000 to £4,000 of the Money Purchase Annual Allowance (MPAA)
- The new rules allowing recalculation of ‘wholly disproportionate’ chargeable event gains
- The reduction of the Dividend Allowance to £2,000 from 6 April 2018
- The alterations and increase to the employer-related pensions advice
- The proposed changes to the repayment of legal expenses incurred by employees
- The reform of the tax and NICs treatment of termination payments
- Additional rules to target disguised remuneration
One would imagine that many, if not all of these, may come back onto the agenda, particularly if the Conservative Party is re-elected. This could also mean that some of the expected implementation dates will be amended, bearing in mind that some of the changes were supposed to take effect from 6 April 2017 (the MPAA, for example).
A number of items that were in the original Finance Bill have now been enacted formally:
- The Insurance Premium Tax rate increase to 12%, which will take effect from 1 June 2017
- The imposition of a tax charge on certain transfers to overseas pension schemes
- The new salary sacrifice provisions
- Gross payment of interest distributions by investment trusts, authorised unit trusts and OEICs
Undoubtedly, once the election has passed and the new government is formed, focus will return to implementing the fiscal policies that they see fit for the country in the years ahead.
We will keep you up to date as things develop.
