What does the 2018 Budget mean for your business?

The Budget 2018 Highlights

As this was the last budget before the UK leaves the European Union (Brexit), there was a lot of speculation as to what it would include. The Chancellor, Philip Hammond started off the 2018 budget announcements by praising the hard working families of the UK who have helped to build the United Kingdom, and echoed the Prime Minister’s announcement of the ‘end of austerity’. But has he delivered on this promise?

We have put together the below infographic and a summary of the key points from the Budget, highlighting what it means for you and your business.

Additional key points from the 2018 Budget:

Business

• Beer, cider and spirit duties will be frozen
• Wine duty will rise with inflation by 8p a bottle
• Tobacco duty will rise by inflation  plus 2%
• New start up loan scheme extended until 2021
• The National productivity investment fund will be raised to £38bn by 2023/2024
• Businesses may be able to access to British Business Bank, rather than the European Social Fund, which has £200m of funding
• The government is currently working with the FCA to provide Financial Ombudsman Service access to SMEs
• Small companies to pay 5% into the Apprenticeship Levy, lowered from the previous 10%
• A £695m investment to help fund apprenticeships

Education and health

• An extra £20.5bn for NHS England over the next 5 years
• An investment of £2bn for a new mental health crisis service support in every major A&E with mental health ambulances, more safe havens and a 24 hour mental health helpline
• £10m for air ambulances, who have previously relied on private investments
• A one-off £400m bonus to schools with roughly £10,000 going to every primary school and £50,000 to secondary schools

Transport and infrastructure

• Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts to be abolished
• E-passport gates at airports to be opened to United States, Canadian, New Zealand, Australian and Japanese nationals
• £30bn cash injection to highway agencies to repair roads, bridges and motorways

Brexit

• An extra £500m for Brexit preparations
• The Chancellor was confident that the government could secure a deal with the EU which allowed for leaving dividend

Digital Services

• A UK Digital Services Tax will be introduced in 2020 and will target UK generated revenues of digital companies with global sales of more than £500m

High Street

• £650m of funding to create future high streets fund to transform high streets
• Investment in improvements for commercial properties to become residential
• Business rates relief measures worth 12bn. By 2021, rateable values will adjust to reflect rental values
• Businesses with a rateable value of £51,000 or less will have their business rates cut by a third. This will mean an annual saving of £8,000 for 90% of independent pubs, shops and cafes

Environment

• £10m to be made available to deal with abandoned waste sites
• New tax to be introduced on the manufacture and import of items with less than 30% recyclable materials

Housing

• Lettings relief to be limited to properties where the owner is in shared occupancy with the tenant from April 2020
• Extending stamp duty relief to first time buyers of shared property of up to £500k

Cost of living

• A rise from £7.83 to £8.21 for the national living wage
• Apprenticeship pay increases above inflation
• Personal tax allowance to rise to £12,500 and the higher threshold to £50,000 in April 2019

Summary

The Chancellor’s budget outlines new investments into the UK’s public services, as well as new methods into finding further ways of increasing taxations methods. The Conservative party are also confident that they will be able to meet the promises made in the budget, but are also prepared to re-evaluate the budget in Spring, following Brexit negotiations.