What's New

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.