Budget 2016 for Business
Find out how the new budget could affect your business.
On 16th March, George Osborne announced his new budget for the coming year. As well as a sugar tax, funding for schools and changes to personal tax allowances the budget made some significant changes which will affect UK businesses.
- Corporation tax to be cut from the current 20% to 17% by 2020.
- Class 2 National Insurance Contributions to be abolished for sole traders from April 2018. Move will save around 3 million self-employed workers £130 per year.
- Annual threshold for small business rates relief to be raised from £6,000 to £15,000. Higher rate threshold also increased from £18,000 to £51,000. Chancellor estimates this means some 600,000 small businesses will pay no business rates at all from April 2017, with a further 250,000 businesses benefiting from a rates cut.
- Public sector employees to be prevented from using “personal service companies” to cut their tax liabilities.
- Commercial stamp duty 0% rate on purchases up to £150,000, 2% on next £100,000 and 5% top rate above £250,000. New 2% rate for high-value leases with net present value above £5m. Effective from midnight 16 March, 2016.
- Closure of corporate tax loopholes to raise £9bn, and anti-tax avoidance and evasion measures to raise a further £12bn from big businesses by 2020.
Read the full article by bytestart.